


every city was a gift

by poppyseedheart



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Slow Burn, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2019-11-29 05:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18219071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppyseedheart/pseuds/poppyseedheart
Summary: Brian more or less corners Pat in the break room. “Can we talk?”“What, talk now?”Brian can’t read his tone. “Yeah. Just in an empty meeting room or something.”“I have a lot of work,” starts Pat, and it's a good lie, but Brian can’t let him hedge like this, not now.“I don’t think this is our world,” he blurts.





	1. internaut

**Author's Note:**

> HI!! Look a new fic from me!! I'm elated to be posting a fic in a new fandom and am so so excited to be sharing this with you all. The most love EVER to Scooter for beta-ing, hand-holding, letting me bounce ideas off of them, and being the most encouraging and lovely cheerleader in history.
> 
> Edit: No promises about posting dates at all! The last chapter will come eventually and it will come from my heart! Thank you for staying with me you lovely readers! <333
> 
> For this first chapter, the only content warning is for a POV character experiencing a panic attack.
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Brian dreams vividly. 

He knows this about himself, knows that his affinity for storytelling doesn't just shut down when he goes to sleep. Nothing about him ever really "shuts down". He was always doomed to be an anxious son of a gun, and he deals with it by joking and laughing and wearing fun socks. It's a process.

Just last night he had a dream where humanity’s last hope was a golden retriever that could talk, and Brian managed to convince her to defeat the aliens with love. It seemed like a strange sign, but he hasn’t been able to decipher whatever message was hidden in there yet. It’s a little less cut and dry than, say, his stress dreams, which usually feature Brian fucking up in terrifyingly plausible ways in realistic settings, and waking up disoriented in the middle of the night, heart pounding, sweat lining his brow, and heaving in breaths until he remembers what’s real and what isn’t. It takes a while, but he always figures it out. The world of his subconscious has tells, and Brian knows them well by this point in his life.

All of that said, he doesn't think he's ever had a dream quite like this one.

Brian is at home. Like, _home_ home. Like the posters he put up in middle school are on the walls of his childhood bedroom and staring him down judgmentally home.

“Brian? Breakfast is ready!” It’s his mother’s voice that calls to him.

This must, thinks Brian, be one of those things where he imagines being back in school, before he left for college. His brain is sending him on a trip down memory lane, or else he sleepwalked a several-hour drive south, which seems unlikely.

He rolls out of bed to find that his head is pounding, and what looks like half of his wardrobe lies in piles on the floor. “Coming,” he calls back, markedly less enthusiastic than his usual.

He feels...hungover? That never happened a lot here.

Looking around more critically, Brian spots an empty pint of ice cream on his nightstand, and his cell phone charging next to it. His iPhone, the current one he has, instead of the sweet LG Chocolate he rocked through high school. All kinds of timeline things are wonky in this dream, not to mention how lucid he is.

Eventually, he finds some clothes that aren’t too rumpled and makes his way down to the kitchen. When his mom sees him, her face softens, one hand reaching out to cup his cheek.

Her smile is sad. “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

Brian’s face scrunches in confusion. “Uh, kinda bad, honestly.”

She nods solemnly. It doesn’t seem like anyone else is home right now. A pang of loneliness swings a bat at Brian’s chest, and he wasn’t expecting it so he can’t defend against it. It leaves him breathless, winded, and his mother is still looking at him like he’s about to break into pieces. Maybe he is. “I know it’s hard,” she says, guiding him to the table, “but I’m glad you came home. You have the whole weekend to just rest here.”

“Okay,” says Brian. He doesn’t know what else he _can_ say. Everything is confusing and his throat feels hot, like he’s going to cry. “What are we doing on Monday?”

His mom tilts her head at him in confusion. “You have to go to work.”

“Wha—”

“You’ll be fine,” she insists, cutting him off. “You don’t even have to talk to him while you’re not filming. I know you’re worried about it, but you take care of yourself first, okay? Brian?” she asks, when he doesn’t answer her first question because he’s too spaced out reaching for context.

The thing is, when she said _him_ , Brian’s brain whispered _Pat_ with the kind of certainty you can’t invent.

“Um,” he says uselessly, grasping for words he doesn’t have. He’s saved from answering further by a heaping plate of pancakes and bacon and scrambled eggs being placed in front of him, fork and knife clinking down next to it. “Thank you,” he says, because the alternative is staring into his breakfast and giving into the urge to sob a little, which feels like it came out of nowhere as much as it feels bone deep, like an ache that’s been there a while, which— which—

He scarfs down his breakfast in record time and goes back to his room. When he looks at his phone anxiously, he sees that it’s Saturday, just like it should be. There are a couple of texts on the home screen: two from Simone, one from his sister, another from his old roommate Jonah.

His _old_ roommate?

In the back of his mind, something is trying to speak to him, but Brian doesn’t know what or why. He just hears it, insistent, telling him he’s going to go stay at Laura’s until he finds a new place because as of right now he’s technically homeless. It would be a shock if the rest of his body didn’t feel so heavy. The crush of sadness is unlike anything he’s felt in months. Hell, maybe years. He’s had a good run of things lately. He doesn’t understand what this dream is trying to tell him.

After half an hour of dithering and waiting to wake up, Brian realizes he’s going to have to do something before his own anxiety swallows him whole.

Simone picks up on the second ring. “Brian?” she asks. Her voice is croaky.

Brian winces. It’s only 8am, and weekends are sacred. She must think it’s an emergency. “Sorry,” he opens with. “I woke up feeling really shitty and kinda freaked out and I didn’t know who to call.” He can hear the frantic edge in his own voice, wonders how much worse it is compressed over the line. “I can hang up,” he continues. “I should probably do that, actually. Since you’re my coworker and I just woke you up with a panic-call.”

Simone sounds like she’s shaking her head. “Gimme a minute,” she mutters, and the pad of her footsteps is barely audible on the other side of the line. “Okay, back up, you said you were going home. Are you okay?”

“I am home,” he says clumsily. “I mean, Baltimore home.”

“Good.”

“I don’t think I’m okay.”

The sigh he hears from her next is not unsympathetic. “Worried about Monday?”

“Just sad, I think.” He’s not sure, is the thing. He’s not sure about any of it. The ache in his chest isn’t lessening, and worsens every time he tries to figure out where it’s coming from.

“You’re not by yourself, are you?”

“In this house? No.”

Another sigh. “Go be with your family, Brian. Take the weekend for yourself. I’ll see you soon. And you can— you can call if you need to, just know I’m… staying at your old place for a bit.”

 _What the hell,_ thinks Brian, but can’t muster enough energy to turn it into a real question. There’s a fog cushioning his thoughts, keeping them distant. Maybe it’s the hangover. “Right,” he says. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure who to call. But I’ll see you on Monday. Um, thank you.”

“Take care,” says Simone, and it sounds like she’s already distracted, focusing back in on whatever she’s doing in New York. Another pang goes through Brian when he tries to imagine it.

“You too,” he answers, and then sits there with the phone to his ear until she hangs up.

His bed is too soft, the comforter too warm where it nudges up against his legs. Distantly, Brian feels his hands shaking, and has to take slow, deep, intentional breaths to stop from spiraling into full-blown panic. It takes nearly half an hour. During that time, he stays on the bed. No one comes to get him; no one calls him. It’s just him in his bedroom, and Brian doesn’t think he’s felt this acutely lonely in years. 

The day does not improve from there.

He meanders back downstairs eventually, and winds up watching a movie on the couch in the living room. He’s wrapped in a blanket like a burrito, just his face peeking out. He’s not sure what movie it is—just whatever he could find channel surfing—and it doesn’t matter all that much since, once it ends, he can’t recall a single thing about it. The next one starts right after, and Brian doesn’t move.

Occasionally, his mom comes by and sits next to him for a bit, or squeezes his shoulder as she walks by. “If you need to stay here longer,” she begins saying at one point.

But Brian shakes his head automatically. “If I stay here, I’ll turn into a lump and never leave the couch.”

She shakes his arm, just gently. “Whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” says Brian, voice thick, and turns back to the movie.

That night, after a dinner that tastes like chalk not because it’s cooked poorly but because Brian can’t seem to enjoy anything, he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. “This is a long dream,” he says out loud. Hearing himself makes him feel a little more anchored. “I’m gonna go to sleep here, and I’m gonna wake up back in New York and everything will be normal again.”

To his left, his phone stays dark, and Brian feels equal parts relieved and disappointed. The last thing he thinks before he falls asleep is that he really should get a haircut, a thought he would examine more closely for how out of left field it seems if he weren’t drifting off so rapidly and inexorably.

/

Brian wakes up in his apartment. “Fuck yeah,” he says reflexively. He feels fine—not hungover, not crushingly sad, not desperately lonely. Just a little tired, maybe, but that’s par for the course.

He springs out of bed and finds his sister grabbing her messenger bag from its spot near the door and heading out. “Morning,” she chirps, balancing her coffee in one hand and her keys in the other while trying to open the door.

He heads over to help her out. “Morning,” he replies. “I had the biggest bummer of a dream last night.”

“Yikes. Tell me about it at dinner? I’m running late. Also, Pat texted he’s on his way, and I know you hate when your room is messy when he visits.”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Get tidying, lover boy. You have like ten minutes. Okay, I really gotta go, love youuuuuuuuu bye!”

And with that, she flutters out in a swirl of scarves and cheer.

“What?” repeats Brian again, now directed at the closed door. He’s alone in the apartment now, their other roommate out of town, and there’s a tingle of anticipation in his gut.

No one answers him, obviously, so he picks himself up and starts cleaning his room, just for something to do. As he does, he realizes that his phone is lighting up. He’s nervous, doesn’t want to touch it for reasons he’d rather not examine, but it’s persistent, and eventually he realizes it’s ringing.

He drops his laundry and picks up his phone. _Pat Gill_. “Hi,” says Brian.

“Hi, I’m outside of your apartment. Um,” continues Pat, sounding frazzled, “would you buzz me up?”

“Yeah, sure.” Brian does so, and then throws as many clothes in the hamper as he can manage before he hears a knock at the front door, sure and quick.

He swings it open to find Pat blinking at him with wild eyes. “Can I come in?”

Brian steps aside. “Yeah, are you okay? What are you doing here?”

Pat’s brow furrows. He looks good, chimes in Brian’s traitor brain, in that flannel with the sleeves pushed up and his black-framed glasses. “I was hoping you could answer that.”

A beat of quiet. The apartment is cold, since they only turn on the heater when they get desperate—East Coast born and bred, baby—and it sends a shiver through Brian’s body, enough to have him rubbing his hands together. This is weird, he thinks. Something about this is wrong.

He laughs because the alternative is to have a nervous breakdown. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” he says. “Laura seemed to know you were coming over, though?”

“Okay,” says Pat, mostly to himself. He appears to steel himself before meeting Brian’s eyes again. “This is gonna sound crazy, but yesterday was a really fucked up day, and then I woke up and I was in the back of a taxi coming here.”

“Sorry, you what now?”

“It didn’t feel like I was sleeping, though. It was like I just—popped into awareness, and I was in a taxi. And I didn’t know where I was going. You have no clue how relieved I was to see your building, dude.”

Brian freezes for just a moment before walking into the living room. “Let’s sit down before you break my brain any more, please.” He takes his own advice, plopping down onto the couch with a dull sound and tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. “What did you mean, about yesterday being fucked up?”

Pat hesitates, which is reason for alarm in and of itself. Pat’s quick as a whip. He can be patient, but he’s never at a loss.

Not like this.

Eventually, the words seem to unstick. “Nothing anyone said made sense. I don’t know, I was miserable and irritable and Simone was making breakfast in my kitchen. Maybe the weirdest thing was that she was awake before me.” He sighs, runs a hand through his long hair. “Everyone was treating me like I was made of glass. And then I wake up in a taxi, and my phone tells me it’s the same day.” He colors a little when he mentions his phone, the only tell it seems like Pat even has most days, and Brian wonders at that.

More pressing, though, are other matters. “I had...a similar experience. Yesterday, I mean.”

“What?”

“I woke up in Baltimore and ended up crying a lot for reasons I couldn’t even figure out.” It comes out bald, vulnerable. Brian thought it might be funny—ha ha, a grown ass man crying real tears without knowing why—but he doesn’t think either of them finds it all that amusing.

Pat is just _looking_ at Brian, intense, thoughtful. “You felt disconnected,” he says, not a question.

“I felt like I was on the outside of a really fucked up joke.”

There’s a recognition then that lights up Pat’s features, and it’s enough for Brian to feel like he’s starting to fray at the edges. For all that he’s home, this doesn’t feel like _home_ , and Pat is here and doesn’t know why and Brian doesn’t either and it’s Saturday again and yesterday didn’t feel like a dream but it had to have been except Pat felt the same way, that it’s weird, that this is messed up, that something’s wrong but they don’t know _what_ , _fuck_ —

“Hey,” says Pat quickly, leaning a little closer but not touching, “hey, Brian, take a breath for me.”

Brian presses his lips together and shakes his head, gasping after a moment. “Can’t,” he manages. His heart is going to beat out of his chest.

“Easy,” says Pat again, voice low and grounding. “Can I touch you?”

Brian nods jerkily.

Pat’s hand comes down onto his shoulder. It’s warm, the heat bleeding through Brian’s t-shirt, and the grip is sure. “You’re safe,” he says, and Brian huffs an incredulous laugh between gasps because Pat can’t possibly be certain about that. “Take your time, you’re all right.” The hand shifts to rub a gentle circle between Brian’s shoulder blades.

Brian can feel he’s gone red all the way down his chest, cheeks burning, ears likely hot pink. “Sorry,” he forces out between heaving breaths. He doesn’t usually panic like this. Not in front of other people. Or, at least, anyone that’s not his sister or his therapist.

Pat remains unfazed. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

Eventually, Brian’s panic recedes, though it’s not really by any fault of his own. It just gives up once he’s tired himself out. It could’ve been 10 minutes or 40—it seems impossible to tell, the only indicator of time being the soreness in his chest and the embarrassment coloring his skin, the shake in his hands, the downturn of his eyes.

“Fuck,” he says. “That was an, uh— an anxiety special for ya.” 

“Yeah, I saw.”

Brian huffs a tired laugh. “What a day, huh?”

Pat makes a show of checking his watch. “It’s ten thirty.” When Brian glares at him halfheartedly, he relents. “I know what you mean. Do you want a glass of water or something?”

“My sister didn’t seem freaked out this morning.”

“Huh?”

Brian runs a hand through his hair, trying in vain to fix it because he knows how unruly it must be right now. “My sister. Earlier, she said you were coming over. At ten in the morning on a Saturday, without me knowing.”

“Right.”

“And she didn’t think that was weird.”

“I mean, we’re friends,” says Pat, but he sounds like he’s reaching for something, even if neither of them is quite sure what it is. Like he wants to say something else and can’t bring himself to.

Brian is thinking about the smirk on Laura’s face, her cadence when she called him lover boy. How everything about her expression was knowing, teasing.

“Uh huh,” Brian replies. “Super normal friend behavior. Y’know, I could actually use that glass of water. Good old H2O.”

Pat laughs a little, shakes his head in a fond way. He gets up and goes to the kitchen, and the apartment goes quiet for a moment until he gets back and hands Brian a glass of water, still smiling that small smile. They nearly brush against each other when Pat sits back down on the couch, and Brian’s hands itch to touch him. His entire body, really, is gravitating toward Pat with an urgency that startles Brian back into the moment.

He takes a long sip of water before asking, “How are you so calm about this?”

“Oh, no, I’m not calm. Not really. But you needed me to be, so I pretended.”

“Good pretending.”

Pat snorts. “Thanks.” 

Another moment passes, and Pat shifts so that their knees are touching, like maybe Brian isn’t the only one wishing they were closer. They’ve sat next to each other on a couch for work what feels like a hundred times by now, and yet. This is, for whatever reason, different. 

“I have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing now,” admits Brian.

“Yeah, that’s a tough one to crack. Hm.”

Brian’s answering laugh edges back toward hysteria. “Pat Gill, I think I need you to still be the calm one for a little bit.”

“I’ll...do my best.”

“Great. Thank you. True friend status, man. You’re passing with flying colors.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a test.”

Brian shrugs, suddenly shy. “It’s not really.”

“Oh, okay, good to know. Hey, do you want to go grab lunch?”

According to his phone, which Brian glances at only cursorily before shoving back into his pocket, it’s nearing eleven now. By the time they get to a lunch place and order food, they’ll probably both be hungry. That is, assuming that this world obeys the goddamn laws of physics. At this point, Brian wouldn't even be surprised if they walked outside to find that gravity is inverted and the sky is green.

He tosses up his hands in surrender to whatever the hell today is. “Sure. Dealer’s choice.”

Pat smiles, lopsided and sweet, and some lingering emotion in his chest makes Brian want to either cry or kiss him.

He does neither, and follows Pat out the door.

/

The sky’s still blue, and gravity seems fine. It’s not a Truman Show situation, either, or at least Brian doesn’t think it is. No one really bothers them, or goes out of their way to connect with them in any way. Par for the course in NYC.

They end up tucked in the back corner of a noisy ramen joint on Clinton, and something about the atmosphere and the steam emanating from his bowl clears Brian’s head enough that he starts talking.

“So I think we just need to put our heads together and figure this out,” he opens with.

Pat cocks an eyebrow and finishes chewing. “Yeah?”

“Yup.” Brian twirls around his chopsticks in the air. “Here’s what we know: it’s Saturday. Again. For both of us. 

“The world seems to be moving on normally around us despite the fact that this definitely isn’t normal.”

“Exactly. I think the first thing we need to figure out is if anyone else is affected by this.”

Pat nods thoughtfully, then pulls out his phone and begins to scroll. “Family first?” he asks, eyes down, hair flopping over to obscure part of his face. “Or should we call that a wash since your sister seemed fine? I don’t want to freak out my parents if we think that’s a dead end.”

“Maybe friends first? Shit, I don’t know, I do fake science for video content, not actual experiments.”

“Friends first,” confirms Pat decisively, and then he hits a button and puts his phone to his ear.

Not to be outdone, Brian follows, hitting Jenna at random from his contacts and listening to the phone ring.

She answers rather quickly, as is her way. “Hi Brian!” she chirps. There’s some sound in the background, and he suspects she’s balancing the phone between her head and shoulder.

“Hey,” he says. “How’s your day going?”

“Um, pretty good? I’m baking bread. Is this a social call?”

“It’s not a business call,” replies Brian automatically, even as his heart starts to sink. “Just checking in.”

Jenna laughs. “Okay? I’m good, you weirdo. Are _you_ all right?”

“Never better,” answers Brian at a clip, and works as quickly as possible to end this phone conversation before it becomes any more of an utter nightmare. “Anyway,” he finishes, after a ramble about shoelaces that not even he himself was able to quite keep up with, “I’d better go. Good to catch up!”

Thankfully, Jenna still sounds amused. “Right. I’ll see you in two days, buddy.”

“Bye,” says Brian, and hangs up the phone.

Pat grins, though it’s tinged with anxiety. “Wow,” is all he says for a moment, and then he follows it with, “that sounded interesting.”

Brian groans. “Don’t wanna talk about it. I’m batting zero today. You learn anything?”

“Just that Clayton is having a game night tonight. He invited us, but I don’t think he actually wants us to come.”

“He’s too nice for his own good.”

“Exactly. Didn’t seem off or anything, though.”

“So it’s just us?”

Pat cocks his head to the side. “That’s a pretty impressive leap you just made to that conclusion there, Brian. Seven billion people on Earth and we’re the only ones experiencing this fuckery?”

“What if it is?”

Brian’s voice is too loud. He realizes that immediately. They’re saved only by the generally noisy chatter around them; the restaurant keeps on operating normally, clinks and slurps and all—it’s just Pat that’s sitting in flabbergasted silence.

It takes a few seconds for Pat to collect himself enough to answer. “I guess we just see what happens.”

“Huh.”

“Wish I had a better idea, but I’m not the smart one here.”

Brian, despite himself, laughs. Maybe blushes. It’s hard to tell with the heat in this place. “Get outta here.”

Pat just grins, pleased with himself, and they finish their food without mentioning their situation again.

/

When they get to Pat’s apartment that afternoon, no one is home, and Pat slumps into a kitchen chair and puts his head in his hands.

“You good?” asks Brian warily.

Pat huffs. It can maybe be considered a laugh, but is more likely an expression of pure anxiety. “I’m amazing,” he answers. “Not freaking out at all.”

Brian ventures that maybe Pat is being facetious here. “Cool, wanna watch a movie?”

No answer.

“Pat Gill? Gonna give me anything to work with here?”

The reply is muffled by the way Pat has dropped his face further into the crook of an elbow. “What if we wake up and things are still weird, or we’re somewhere else entirely? I woke up in a taxi this morning. That’s so fucked up.”

“Well,” says Brian, “at least we’ll probably be together.”

“You don’t know that,” replies Pat, though he sounds guilty for even bringing it up. “You don’t even know we’ll both wake up in the same situation. Maybe I’ll just be in this loop and you’ll go somewhere with a whole different Pat. Or a future version of me. Fuck, I don’t know how this works.”

Brian raises his eyebrows. “Wow. Mr. Catastrophe over here.”

“I think we’re doomed to just trade off on having mental breakdowns for the rest of eternity.”

“Maybe,” says Brian, so flippant that it seems to startle Pat out of his brooding. “Do you wanna try and do some research or something?”

“On what?”

Brian shrugs. “I don’t know. All of it? There’s bound to be _something_ , and I don’t have any other ideas.”

Pat acquiesces, though he doesn’t look enthusiastic about it, and then end up staying on the couch all the way through dinner, Pat on his laptop and Brian peeking over his shoulder, offering search term suggestions and pointing out things that look like that might have even the tiniest glimmer of usefulness.

They find exactly nothing, and Brian doesn't know how he feels about that. And then they fall asleep in the living room half-slumped onto each other, and Brian doesn't know how to feel about that, either.

/

“You have glitter on your face.”

Brian jolts into his body, startled, heart pounding, and finds Pat looking at him with a strange expression in his eyes. “What?”

“Glitter,” repeats Pat, gesturing vaguely to indicate Brian’s face. “A lot of it.”

“What? Wow, jesus. How long have you been here?”

Pat blinks. “Um, maybe three seconds?”

“Oh,” says Brian, catching his breath. “Okay, cool, fun. Super good and way better than the alternative, and totally fine and perfect, nothing weird about it.”

"Totally," agrees Pat. He seems to have recovered from his freakout the night before just in time for Brian to swing back around to anxiety at the mind-breaking confusion of their situation. Or maybe he's just distracted by the glitter that's apparently all over Brian's face. It's anyone's guess. "So do we wanna figure out what we're doing here?"

Brian takes in their surroundings as best he can in the moment. The place is moving, first off. Wheels turn against the road beneath them, and it's obvious within seconds that they're on a tricked-out bus of some kind. The entire interior is styled like a fancy lounge, complete with a bar and lots of couches, one of which Brian is haphazardly splayed across like a boudoir model. He leans into the ridiculousness, batting his eyelashes at Pat, who shoots him a look but seems amused. Satisfied, Brian continues inventorying the space around him: impractical white rug in the middle of the floor, mini fridge by the bar, walls done up in shades of purple and pink. It looks like the kind of bus you would take to your senior prom if your friend's family was really, really rich and offered to pay for it, not something any practical human would ride on for any reason.

"I have no idea, but it seems pretty cool," says Brian. "Do you think we're, like, aliens? Come to kidnap some boy genius and take him to our home planet?"

"Statistically, at younger ages there are more girl geniuses, I think."

"Oh, shoot, good callout. We'll snag a girl, then. I wonder if this bus flies."

"It probably doesn't fly."

"Yeah, fair enough. It's probably got some cool tricks, though. I mean, look at this place."

Pat takes that as a cue to look around, inspecting further, and he gets up and walks a lap. "It is pretty sweet. Maybe one of us is rich, and super eccentric."

"I could see you as an eccentric millionaire who goes into isolation with only a nice bar and a twink to keep you company."

"You're terrible. I'd obviously list you before the nice bar."

"I'm honored."

Pat squints behind the rims of his glasses. He's dressed well, in a button up shirt with an actual tie and a pair of neatly pressed slacks. Brian takes a moment to check out his own look, which is apparently a pair of sinfully tight jeans and a half-unbuttoned flowery shirt made of...silk?

Brian holds out a sleeve, turns it in the light. "I can't tell which of us is richer in this world."

Pat looks down at himself at that. "Huh. I guess this is just our personalities taken to extremes, huh? Also, I should note, though I hate to end the fun, that I'm pretty sure I work for you."

"What?"

"I don't know," says Pat, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and then flipping his hair out of his face once, twice. "I feel a lot of...fondness? Amusement? But as if I have to put up with you a lot."

"All seems normal so far."

"Ha, ha," answers Pat drily. "No, seriously, it's like a weird sense memory."

Brian thinks about how badly he wanted to kiss Pat the day before. How it felt like a shadow of his own desire, layered, different. "Okay. You work for me doing what?"

"My subconscious isn't that specific."

"Well then what the hell do I—" starts Brian, and then he cuts himself off. "Oh. I mean, that's just ridiculous."

“Ridiculous?” asks Pat drily. “In that outfit? No, surely not.”

Brian stands up, strikes a pose that comes way too naturally for him to have not done photo shoots before. There’s a confidence in him he’s not used to—sure, he makes a fool of himself for a living, but this is different. There’s a shell, a lacquer, that protects him from Pat’s judgmental look, from his own self-consciousness.

“You’re gonna laugh,” says Brian, “but you shouldn’t.”

“I shouldn’t?”

“Nope. I’m a real life popstar, baby.”

Pat, to his credit, doesn’t laugh. He does go on a legitimate face journey, though. He gets so expressive sometimes. It makes the times when he’s impossible to read that much more frustrating. “Honestly, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“No?” asks Brian, fishing a little.

Pat smiles, lazy, like he knows what Brian’s doing but doesn’t mind indulging him. “Brian, you have a band in our world, it’s not like this is a stretch. You’re more comfortable on a stage than anywhere else. It figures you’d be good at this, too. And if one of us was gonna be a popstar, it sure as hell was never gonna be me.”

Brian doesn’t want to answer yet. Wants to hold that compliment in his chest for a bit. He turns the conversation on a pivot instead. “What do you do, then?”

Pat furrows his brow, looking down. “Based on the sheer number of twitter add-ons on my phone, I’d guess something in social media, maybe.”

“That’s fun.”

Pat makes a noncommittal sound.

They pass some more time in silence before Brian bolts up where he’s sitting, back ramrod straight, and yells, “Public relations!” 

Pat startles. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re my PR guy! This is amazing. And also I am so sorry. I don’t know what I’ve done but I feel an immense amount of apology in my heart.”

“That sounds about right,” says Pat, grinning wryly. “You must pay me pretty well.”

“I’m sure I do,” answers Brian, despite knowing nothing of the sort in any kind of factual manner. He just can’t imagine shortchanging anyone, especially Pat, when he himself was borderline destitute for a while. He wonders if the Brian of this world experienced that, or if he hit the big time young enough that he never had to worry about rent or food or being able to hang out with his friends. The idea of living a life free from struggle doesn’t sit well with him, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He’s not sure he’d be excited to meet a version of himself that’s never struggled like that.

Pat just flips his hair over his forehead and shakes his head fondly. “I have a feeling I earn it. Big difference between quirky nerd and smooth singer boy.”

“Ooh, smooth singer boy, I like that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Brian pops to the front of the bus to find their driver, a nice woman named Sharon, staring out at the road. She tells him that it’ll be another six hours until they hit Odessa, and another two or so after that before they make it to the stadium. When he thanks her, she hands him a little candy wrapped in waxed paper. “I know it’s not on your diet plan,” she says, cutting him off before he even thinks to say anything, “but I promise not to tell.”

They’re his favorite. Brian swallows down whatever the hell the emotion that bubbles up readily in his throat is and thanks her, heading back to relay the news to Pat.

“Road trip,” is all Pat says, not quite enthusiastic enough to be a cheer but still in the spirit of it. 

They spend a while hanging out in silence, and it grows comfortable. Pat discovers that his phone has all kinds of information that neither of them knew just by feeling it in their bodies, so they start looking all of that over.

Brian takes a “which totally cute celebrity are you?” quiz from a teen magazine site and gets himself. Pat acquiesces when Brian asks for a high five. Half an hour passes, then another.

"Do you think I'm popular with teenage girls?" asks Brian, peering over his shoulder to check out his own ass in these jeans. It is, if he can say so without sounding too pompous, absolutely slamming. Brian of this timeline (this universe? fever dream?) clearly works out more than Brian ever has in his own life. Brian of this time also, admittedly, probably has a slew of personal trainers and nutritionists and people whose job it is to literally make sure his ass looks this good, so maybe it's not all that impressive on its own.

Pat rolls his eyes. "I'm sure you're popular with lots of demographics," he says. "You're very famous."

"Aww," simpers Brian, "are you jealous?"

"I'm not jealous, you showboat. It actually says more about my skills at making you look good that you’re this well known. God, you're a menace."

"I might be trouble, but I’m a sunrise too," sings Brian, fully out of nowhere. "Whoa," he says immediately, "I think I wrote that. I think that's one of my songs."

Pat is flicking through his phone, fascinated by whatever it is he's reading. Brian guesses that a PR guy is probably pretty popular. Pat has always been good at networking in a way that's kind of intimidating to Brian, who just launches himself personality-first at people and hopes for the best. "That's nice," Pat says absentmindedly, still scrolling.

"Function’s dysfunction, mystery’s a ruse. Sail the ocean, salt on your tongue, get a clue."

"Uh huh."

"Call it bruised, messed up, black and blue."

"Sure."

"The only one that sees me like this is you," Brian finishes, cocking out his hip and winking. Pat's not even looking at him, but Brian is thrilled, because holy shit. This is his song. There's choreography and everything. He imagines what it would sound like with his band playing behind him, with the crowd cheering and screaming from the stands, and his adrenaline spikes. He can't stop grinning.

(There's another part of him, quiet, in his heart and the back of his mind, that's also thinking 'holy shit', because Brian knows his goddamn self, and this song is 100% for-fucking-certain about Pat, and that is a whole other can of worms he doesn't think he can afford to open right now.)

Pat seems to have found what he was looking for, because he puts his phone away, finally, and smiles. "It was good," he says. "Sounded familiar, which is freaky. I guess our bodies have some kind of muscle memory, or subconscious awareness. Even if we don't know what's going on exactly."

"Yeah," says Brian, and then, on a hunch, starts to sing again.

He gets through two and a half songs before he has to stop, briefly worried he'll mess up his voice for the show tonight.

Pat is looking at him with a soft expression, uncharacteristically unguarded. "I don't think I'll ever understand how you do that."

"Sing?" asks Brian, sitting down. He has the strongest urge to fix his hair, but not sloppily like he usually does. He wants his bangs to be perfect. He's hyper-aware of every spot in the room that could be hiding a camera.

"No, you're just— you're maybe the least self-conscious person I've ever met. And we work at a company that writes news and makes videos about gaming. It's not like we're an uptight bunch."

Brian shrugs. "Better to be the loudest person in the room," he says, though he didn't mean to.

Pat is still looking at him gently. "As opposed to...?"

"The most awkward, or the most nervous. I guess you could be both, but if you project confidence at full volume then it's harder for people to tell when you're not as sure of yourself.” Brian hesitates, tugs a little at his own wrist. “I don't know what I'm saying. It's getting a little too deep for me here, Pat Gill. You're better at the philosophizing thing than I am."

He expects to be cut off by Pat's laughter, but it doesn't happen, and the quiet in the room stays thoughtful, no sharp edges, until Pat breaks it. "I didn't think about it that way. About you that way, I mean. It makes sense."

"Yeah?"

"You wanna talk about deflecting with humor?" asks Pat sardonically, and Brian can't help but laugh at that.

Beneath the two of them, the hum of the road overwhelms the silence, and they shift into a comfortable half hour of occasional chatting but mostly just taking in their surroundings. Outside, the landscape is so flat that things go blurry before they disappear over the horizon, and the sun illuminates the yellow grass, the wide fields. At the end of this drive, they'll be at a stadium in Kansas City, and Pat will watch from backstage as Brian sings his fucking heart out.

And it won't be a joke, this time. Here, with all of these songs about brash love and being seen and moving on, it’s not a joke.

Brian doesn't quite know how he feels about that yet.

/

The moment they stop at the stadium, things kick into gear. Security escorts Brian from the bus to the backstage area, Pat trailing sedately behind, and Brian glimpses a few fans with cameras behind a fence every now and again.

He shoots them all quick smiles, even winks at one point, and the screaming in response overwhelms him.

“Showboat,” calls out Pat, a reminder and a fond beration all at once.

Brian tosses his head back and laughs. “Comes with the territory,” he calls back.

He’s shuffled into a room with the most extravagant salad bar setup he’s ever seen outside of Los Angeles, and is told he has half an hour to eat before he needs to get to wardrobe and makeup.

Pat joins him because he doesn’t seem to know what else to do, and no one stops him. “Hell of a life,” he murmurs, almost to himself, as he scatters some pepitas over his salad. 

“I know,” agrees Brian. “Think we can get Tara to instate a salad bar like this for long filming days? Like, ‘Overboard and Oranges,’ and it’s a bar with oranges and also fancy salad.”

“Unlikely.”

Brian sighs dramatically. “But how will I live with anything less after I’ve eaten among the gods, Pat Gill?”

“Does that make me one of the gods?”

“If you wanna be,” answers Brian, call and response, flirty because that’s how it always works with the two of them.

Pat nods, pretending to think it over seriously. “I think I’ll pass,” he says at long last, drizzling a kale vinaigrette atop the spinach leaves in his bowl and peering at it suspiciously. “Too much responsibility.”

“I mean, the myths about the Greek gods don’t paint them as particularly responsible stewards of their power, I’m just saying.”

“We must be better than those that came before us, Brian.”

Brian nods. “Of course, of course, so sorry. Feel free to renounce your godhood, then.”

“I will, thank you.”

Brian finishes his salad and finds he, unfortunately, can’t stop fucking smiling. God. _What a life_ , Pat had said, and Brian agrees wholeheartedly.

Exactly thirty minutes after his warning, a young woman walks in, holding a phone that’s beeping, timer run out. “Brian?” she says, lilting upward, but the look in her eyes says she knows who he is, and plenty more besides. “We need you in the back for hair and makeup, please.”

“On it,” he says, tossing his disposable bowl into the trash and fist-pumping when it lands cleanly. Pat claps politely, and Brian winks at him. “Don’t miss me too much,” he says, and sounds like a douche, probably, and doesn’t care because he’s happy.

Pat, for his part, just says, sarcastic as all hell, “However will I survive?” and Brian wrinkles his nose at him before following the assistant back to get poked and prodded into show shape.

/

An urgency overcomes Brian as he’s about to go onstage. A couple of different people he doesn’t recognize are trying to usher him closer to his mark as the music swells and the fans scream, but he tugs himself away and finds Pat waiting in the green room.

He doesn’t notice Brian at first, and Pat’s face is focused on whatever he’s doing on the laptop he found in a bag in the back of the bus. From what Brian has garnered from their situation, he and Pat have an unusual relationship, that Pat stays with him, that they travel together. That’s not normal. Not for a popstar and his long-suffering PR guy. 

“Hi,” says Brian, his voice way too loud in the room. It’s T-minus one minute to showtime according to the voice that comes on the intercom. “Are you gonna watch?”

“Am I allowed out there?” asks Pat, head snapping up when he hears Brian’s voice. 

“I think you are if I say you are,” answers Brian. “And if not, I don’t care.” _I need you_ , he doesn’t want to say. _I’m terrified and you’re the only safe thing in the entire universe to me right now._ He can’t explain the shift in him, how it started in the makeup chair and only got stronger the more people he didn’t know that talked to him, or the anxiety rising in his chest that never needs an excuse to get the party started.

Pat hesitates.

“Please,” says Brian. He thinks his heart is going to beat out of his chest. “Just for tonight.”

And maybe the hesitation was just a similar kind of nervousness, because as soon as Pat hears the soft note of pleading in Brian’s voice, he caves. “Yeah, of course. Lead the way.”

Brian nods, hair bobbing, and the intercom announces that they have thirty seconds left. Fueled by the energy crescendoing in his entire body, Brian grabs Pat’s hand and drags him to the side stage.

“Brian?” someone asks as they fast-walk past. The voice follows them, echoing down the hallway. “You need to be downstairs like three minutes ago!”

“Coming!” Brian shouts back, and deposits Pat right at the side stage. “I’ll see you after,” he says firmly, like he didn’t just go beg Pat to watch.

But Pat’s just nodding at him, eyebrows raised encouragingly. “After,” he agrees. “Give ‘em hell.”

Brian takes one more moment to smile stupidly at Pat before he jogs off in the other direction.

The assistants downstairs look tremendously relieved when Brian heads to his mark, striking the pose he’ll be launched onto the stage holding without even having to think about it. It’s showtime. It’s only natural that he’s here with his hands arched up into a neat vee, his hips tilted just shy of suggestive. _Ambiguously gay popstar_ , he thinks, and has to stifle a hysterical giggle, because this is _happening_. It’s happening _now_ , no time to wait or overthink or panic. Pat is above him, waiting in the wings, and Brian is ninety seconds late, and the floor is whirring as the mechanical engines spinspinspin to life, and it’s—

Five—

—the light must be scattering ethereally across all of the glitter on his face. It had looked ridiculous when they reapplied in the dressing room, silly under the clinical fluorescents, but Brian has learned so much today already about the blurry line between artifice and artistry—

Four—

—and in this moment he’s so nervous he can feel his heartbeat _everywhere_ , in his fingertips, the joint at his ankle, under his tongue, and—

Three—

—the adrenaline, this _top of the rollercoaster_ tipping point, is the best goddamn feeling in the world, bar none, and when—

Two—

—the platform under his feet lurches, Brian’s feet respond before his brain, steadying him, holding him up—

One—

—as it breaks the surface and the crowd envelops him in a wall of pure noise and joy. 

Brian’s grin goes megawatt, and he starts to sing.

/

Later, he’ll remember the show only in snatches. A sign proclaiming a fan’s love for him, one with a set of neatly drawn emoji hearts, and one flanking that one on the other side that says something Brian cannot in good conscience read out loud with so many children in the audience. The slowest song in the set, second to last, and how he puts down the mic during the penultimate chorus so he can hear thousands of voices sing his own words back to him. How it brings bright tears to his eyes, just for a moment.

And then Pat. God, Pat. After the show, he immediately gets an armful of ramped-up, delighted, exhausted Brian, and manages it handily.

 _You just deadlifted me_ , Brian remembers saying on a stream once, breathless with laughter, but in the moment that feels distant, almost colorless. Right now, Brian’s entire world is made up the warm bands of Pat’s arms around his waist, his sweaty, glittery face making a mess of the shoulder of Pat’s blazer, his cheeks sore from how hard he’s been smiling for the last few hours.

In the bus, after, Pat says, “You were electric.”

There’s no force in the world that can stop Brian from answering, helplessly, “You bring me back down to Earth.”

/

They fall asleep on the bus, its gentle rocking lulling them away, and Brian spares only a moment to wonder how he looks, mouth open, slack, all of the tension keeping him carefully presentable gone, before it stops mattering and the entire universe shifts around him.

/

Brian wakes up in his own bed in his apartment in New York City.

He swings his legs over the side, checks his phone—Monday, seven A.M.—and blinks at his closet, rows of clothes staring back. That wasn’t— it wasn’t a dream. He remembers it all perfectly: the melancholic loneliness, the vague panic at the ramen place, the show... _god_ , the show, the fans, Pat smiling from the wings and bopping a little in that way he does when he wants to dance but doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.

The memories don’t fade as Brian changes into a button up and jeans, nor as he brushes his teeth, wrangles his hair.

Laura is making breakfast when he walks out of his bedroom. The shower is running in the other bathroom, which must be Jonah, and Brian is, at this point, not convinced he’s not _still_ dreaming. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe all of it is.

“Ummm,” says Laura, when Brian has just been standing silently rolling this over in his head for the better part of thirty seconds, “good morning?”

“Morning,” he replies on instinct, and walks past her to grab a granola bar and an apple from the counter. “This might be a weird question, but how was your weekend?”

Laura is still squinting at him like she’s not sure he’s fully awake. “It was fine. I went out to lunch with my college friends that were in town on Saturday, I thought I told you about that. And then yesterday I just did my nails and watched Netflix and was a total lump on the couch, which was awesome.”

“Right,” says Brian. “And, at risk of sounding even weirder, um, how was _my_ weekend?”

“Is this a bit? Are we doing a bit right now?”

“Not a bit.”

“You sure?”

Brian sighs and collapses onto one of the dining room chairs. “I’m kinda out of it,” he admits. His side is burning, an unwelcome reminder that he’s back in his own body here. Popstars, as it turns out, don’t get shingles often. Not when they have a team making sure they’re healthy and beautiful at all times.

Laura clinks a glass of water on the table in front of him. “Yeah, no kidding. To answer your question, I’m not sure. You weren’t around much. Which I’m now a little worried about, honestly.”

“I’m fine,” says Brian, and then, because he’s too tired and confused to suffer the third degree, adds, “I think I might have a fever.”

“Ah,” answers Laura. She returns to the kitchen and comes back with some ibuprofen and an ice pack. “Call out, then. You never use your sick days, I’m convinced that place is gonna grind you into dust. I need to get to work soon, but call if you need anything, all right?”

“Okay,” says Brian.

Laura ruffles his hair, and he ducks away from her as best he can. “ _Rest_ ,” she insists, and tugs on her beanie before heading out the door into the windy day.

Brian waits five minutes, finds the window between her leaving and Jonah coming out to the living room, and grabs his own bag before heading to work. Rest, his ass. He’s a little early, so he’ll probably have to kill some time, but he can’t stop thinking that he really, really needs to see Pat.

/

Pat is, in fact, already at work when Brian gets there.

“Both of you early?” Jenna crows. “Jeff, check the window, are pigs flying?”

“Hardy har,” replies Pat, as Jeff shoots a dramatic thumbs up from his vantage point by the windows. “We’re consummate professionals.”

“Yeah,” agrees Brian. “The people love me, so I decided to give you more of me today. You’re very welcome.”

Jenna grins at him and goes back to tapping at her computer.

Brian, hands tingling a little in anticipation, stops by Pat’s desk before heading to his own. “Hi,” he says. “How was your weekend?”

When Pat looks at him, his gaze is searching, a little ragged at the edges, and Brian broadcasts recognition. _I was there. I remember._ Pat sags a little in his seat, relief skimming his features. “Fucking weird,” he murmurs.

“Mine too,” answers Brian.

“Talk later?”

Brian nods, head bobbing before he even realizes he’s agreed. “Yeah, yeah, cool.” He goes to his own desk and fires up his computer. If he remembers correctly, he has plenty of work to do for this Sunday’s Unraveled, and there’s no use wasting time.

/

The first half of the day is normal. It’s really normal. Brian can’t stop bouncing his leg under his desk.

After lunch, Simone comes to him during one of those rare moments where everyone else seems to be gone, either filming something or in the bathroom or in a meeting, and Brian doesn’t like that he can’t read her expression. That almost always means trouble. He’s even more worried when she opens with, “You can tell me to fuck off if you want, I promise I won’t be offended, but I’ll be mad at myself if I don’t ask.”

“Ah, jeez,” says Brian, and braces himself. “Fine, lay it on me.”

Simone sits down next to him, lowers her voice. “Are you and Pat okay?”

Of all the things she could’ve said, this is one of the last that Brian expected. “What?”

“Well,” says Simone quickly, gesturing expressively in that way she has, “you two usually come in together, and at least one of you has this smirk like ‘yeah I’m hitting this and you’re not, what of it?’ Which is cute, and gross. And you do lunch together most of the time, but today you didn’t even leave your desk.”

“Detective Simone,” quips Brian, buying time. He needs a minute to process all of...that. “Pat and I are fine, I don’t— I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, okay, sorry to pry, you just both seem so zoned out and it was such a bummer when you guys took a break a couple months ago, remember? I’m just checking, for, like, office morale.”

Brian leans back in his chair, at a loss. “A break from what?”

Simone laughs a little like she thinks he’s joking. “From dating? You do remember you’re dating him, right?” It’s delivered like a joke, but she must see something in Brian’s expression that causes her to keep talking. “What the hell, did you guys Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind each other or something? What the fuck, Brian?”

“No one was Eternally Sunshined,” he cuts in. _Come on, Brian, think. Improv is literally a listed skill on your resume._ “We’re good,” is what he ends up settling on. “Sorry, I was confused, I forgot we even took that break. I think you guys in the office made it a bigger deal than it really was.”

Simone—sweet, nosey Simone—melts from suspicion into empathy at that. “I just worry about you guys,” she says.

“And I appreciate that. Can I ask you a question, though?”

Simone nods. Her eye contact is so intense that Brian almost crumples under it, but he holds his ground. 

“Why did you come to me and not Pat? Not that I’m against it, you guys are just…”

“Close?”

“Yeah.”

Simone nods, this time thoughtfully, and glances over at Pat’s empty chair, empty desk. “That’s fair. But us being close is why I know he’d shut me down. He never even really talked to me about you when you guys were first getting together last year. He keeps his cards really close to his chest, you know that. Especially with dating stuff.” She smiles and fidgets with a pen on the desk in front of her, eyes far away as she draws on her memory. “I literally had to ply him with alcohol to get him to tell me about your first date, like, fuck dude! I was a little hurt at first, but that’s just his M.O.. I figured if I was gonna get an answer, it would be from you. And it was! So mission accomplished.”

“Mission accomplished,” echoes Brian. He’s thinking, too, though, about how quiet Pat has been today, how he kept his head down and worked and all Brian has gotten from him are a couple of texts and a promise for later.

 _After_ , like they’d promised at the show, except then Brian didn’t feel a seed of dread blooming at the bottom of his stomach. He doesn’t know how this conversation is going to go. Maybe he should speed it along just to stop the agony of waiting.

“I’m gonna check in with him when he gets back,” says Brian.

“Good,” answers Simone, decisive. “Pull him out of whatever funk he’s in.”

Brian salutes, a little goofy. “I’ll do my best.”

Simone grins and socks him in the arm, hard enough to hurt. “I’m glad you guys are okay.”

“Thanks,” says Brian, and he means _for checking in_ and _for being a good friend_ and _for taking care of your people loudly, directly, without waiting or worrying or just hoping everything’s okay._

“Any time,” says Simone, and Brian thinks she understands.

/

Brian more or less corners Pat in the break room. “Can we talk?” he asks, while Pat is pouring himself coffee.

“What, talk now?”

Brian can’t read his tone. “Yeah. Just in an empty meeting room or something.”

“I have a lot of work,” starts Pat, but Brian can’t let him hedge like this, not now.

“I don’t think this is our world,” he blurts out.

That gets Pat’s attention. He puts down the coffee pot, his mug only half full. “What?”

“The back room is empty. Pat, c’mon.”

Pat goes without further protest.

The room is, like Brian said, empty, and the motion lights click on as they walk in. The chairs are arranged in a loose semi-circle, probably from whatever video was filmed in here last—they have the studio, but sometimes still need that “home-grown feel,” according to Tara, whatever that means in theory. In practice, it’s this little meeting room with a tripod in the corner and instructions for hooking your device up to the TV on the wall printed and laminated helpfully on the center of the table.

Brian sits down on the floor, and Pat follows suit, long legs crossed and back against the wall. “So,” begins Brian, “I just talked to Simone, and she’s worried about us.”

“Well, we did have a freaky shared hallucination. We probably seemed off.”

“She’s worried we broke up,” continues Brian, like he didn’t even hear Pat, because it’ll be way easier to talk about this if he keeps it clinical, or at least pretends to. “Because we’ve been dating since last year, and when we took a break it made the office dynamic weird. Like today, I guess. But don’t worry, we got back together, and we’re happily coupled up. Except for today, which is out of the ordinary.”

And with the way they’ve been talking about sense memory, Brian has become hyper-sensitive to his body, searching for clues. When he was still taking dance classes, that level of introspection was all he ever clung to in those classes, the only way he could succeed. Your brain can’t dance no matter how bright it is. Brian learned that early on, and never forgot it, and so it’s frankly ridiculous that he didn’t notice until this moment how _nice_ it is, even in a weirdly tense moment, to be alone with Pat. How he feels comfortable here. How his worry wars with the part of his brain chanting _Pat, warm, home, safe._

 _Love_ , says Brian’s brain, and once he starts listening he can’t manage to tell it to fuck off. _You love him. It’ll be okay as long as you have that. This happened last time, don’t you remember? Your worry was poison. You got scared and that scared him and the break was the worst, it was the absolute worst—_

“Fuck,” says Pat. “We’re not dating.”

Brian’s chest goes tight. His brain goes quiet. “We are not,” he confirms after unsticking his words from the back of his mouth. “So this isn’t our world.”

“Shit,” continues Pat. “How did we not—” he cuts himself off, sighs on an exhale. “What, so we’re in some Infinite Improbability Drive bullshit?”

“ _Hitchhiker’s_ reference,” says Brian, because he can’t help himself. “Nice.”

“Thanks. But seriously, what do we do?”

“Today, or in general?”

Pat runs a hand through his hair. “Right. Simone already suspected something. I guess we play along for the rest of the day, and then talk about the rest of it over drinks after work?”

Brian would really like to comment on that last bit, but his brain is stuttering over _play along_. “You wanna fake date me, Pat Gill?”

Pat rolls his eyes. Some of the lines in his forehead have eased, though, and his shoulders aren’t so hunched up. “Something like that. Think you can handle this?”

The question, paired with Pat flexing his arms, a bizarre macho posturing, startles a bright laugh out of Brian. “Oh boy, don’t go writing checks you can’t cash.”

“Who says I can’t cash it?” Pat flexes harder, and Brian looks away from the bulge of his bicep. 

“Okay, okay, save the flirting for people are watching us, you don’t wanna waste all your great lines on an empty room.”

Pat looks, for just a moment, like he’s going to rebut, but he shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah, fair enough. Let’s get out there, then. You good?”

It’s a little quiet, a shift into earnestness. Brian thinks for a moment. “Yes and no,” he admits. “But I’m fine enough to go back to work.”

“If you need anything, just— let me know, yeah? Especially today, since it won’t seem weird if we disappear into a broom closet or something.”

“Oof, I really hope we’re not banging in broom closets.”

Pat shrugs. “I mean, it’s not that bad.”

 _“What?_ ” asks Brian, both scandalized and delighted. “Oh my god, you minx. Tell me about that later.”

“Fine,” says Pat. “But seriously, let me know.”

“Same to you,” answers Brian, and loves and hates the warmth in his chest at that. It’s the two of them against the whole world, over and over, and it’s scary, and it’s mostly okay.

They walk out into office, and Brian doesn’t blush when Jenna nudges him with her elbow. “Welcome back, you two,” she says, smug, happy.

“Thank you,” says Brian primly, put-upon.

Pat winks at him over Jenna’s head, and Brian winks right on back.

/

It turns out that, when you’re busy, it’s not that hard to pretend to be in love with your best friend. The bare minimum of efforts is enough to appease everyone around them, and Brian is relieved to find that he and Pat aren’t constantly PDA-ing in the office. That would not only be highly unprofessional, but also way out of character for Pat, who’s usually dating someone for at least a month or two before he brings it up, even in casual conversation.

Pat squeezes his shoulder once as he passes by Brian’s desk, Brian makes a flirty little comeback at one of Pat’s jokes—all in all, it’s just their usual schtick dialed up a few notches.

Eventually, the day ends, and Brian and Pat bundle up in their scarves and hit up one of the bars between the office and Pat’s apartment. 

Brian orders a dark and stormy, and accepts Pat’s oohs and aahs. Pat just orders a beer and some chicken tenders.

He unwinds his scarf slowly and takes a swig of his beer. “Were we cursed?” he asks. “Because this feels like a curse.”

Brian can’t quite mask the pang of hurt in his voice when he answers, “Yeah, I’m sure it’s terrible being stuck with me.”

Pat shoots him a look. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No, I know, I just feel like we’re talking around it all. I don’t know, are we?”

“I didn’t think so. What do you mean?”

“We don’t know what’s happening,” he says slowly. “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to figure it out. But maybe we can figure out why.”

“Why?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Pat takes another drink. In this lighting, his eyelashes look particularly long. “Any theories?”

“Well,” says Brian, “in fiction, isn’t this kind of thing always about learning something?” Pat’s looking at him like he’s grown an extra head, so Brian hurries to explain. “There’s a lesson. We just need to figure out the pattern, what’s consistent across the board.”

“You’ve been doing too many Unraveled videos.”

Brian can feel his face shifting into something that’s probably not too pretty, some mix of disappointment and frustration and hurt. “I’m trying to figure this out.”

“Ugh, no, I’m sorry,” says Pat immediately. “You’re right, none of this makes sense, so why wouldn't it be some mystical hero’s journey thing. It’s a start, at least.”

“I guess.”

Pat fixes his glasses, and Brian notices his hands are trembling, just a little. “I’m sorry,” repeats Pat. “I’m exhausted and confused, and it’s making me mean. I don’t mean to be, but I can feel myself being an asshole.”

Brian takes a sip of his own drink, relishes the burn of alcohol in his throat, the way it warms him up almost immediately. “It’s okay,” he says, and finds that it’s honest. “Do we wanna try starting here?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s do that.” He grabs a napkin and pulls a pen out of his messenger bag and starts writing.

 _Day 1_ | _Day 2_ | _Day 3_ | _Day 4_

In each column, he puts a short summary:

_Not together, both felt weird/sad_

_Weekend, mostly normal, taxi??_

_Brian is a popstar, Pat is his publicist_

_Pat & Brian are dating_

“Yeah?” asks Pat. “Anything to add?”

“I don’t think so. I like the double question marks, though, nice touch. Really evokes a sense of panicked confusion.”

“Thanks.” Pat taps his pen against the table a few times, then starts chewing on the end of it. He likely doesn’t realize he’s doing it—it’s a tic that comes up in meetings a lot, especially in their pen-covered environment. They’re enabling him, really. “So we can end up anywhere, which day three taught us. Not just NYC, or even the East Coast. They're not all Saturday, which we learned today. And we don’t have to be together, based off of day one.”

“But we know each other in all of them,” adds Brian. “We’re friends. Maybe it’s something we have to work out together, since I didn’t wake up on day one like, ‘Who the hell is Pat?’ I knew who you were.”

Pat hums, making a note at the bottom of the napkin. “Would you know, though? If you didn’t know me?”

Brian doesn’t have an answer to that.

Pat continues. “It seems like we get a day in each place, and then as soon as we go to sleep it’s fair game for the next day.”

“Uh huh. Do you think an all nighter would solve it?”

“It might get us stuck somewhere a little bit longer,” Pat posits. “We could try it.”

“Time’s passing here, but do you think time is passing back home, too? Are we just pod people going through the motions? Are there other confused Brians and Pats trying to figure out how the hell to blend in?”

Pat frowns. “That’s implying that all of these worlds we’re visiting are...real, salient. That they existed before we showed up, and they’ll keep existing after.”

“This is breaking my brain.”

“Yeah, same.”

“We need more information,” says Brian. “There’s not enough, uh, data. This could be the last one, we don’t even know.” He finishes the last of his drink and orders another right after. “Do you wanna sleep normally tonight and see what happens tomorrow?”

Pat sighs. “Probably.” He scribbles some more notes on the napkin, some of which are indecipherable due to his handwriting, and pauses to clean his glasses with his flannel.

Brian’s drink arrives, and he ventures to make quick work of it. If there was ever a time to drink to excess on a work night, this probably qualifies.

“We need theories,” he announces half an hour later, a little drunk and a little too loud.

Pat agrees readily, and they conspire for another two hours, some thoughts plausible and many just jokes that turn into bits, the two of them playing off of each other until they’re laughing so hard Brian’s stomach aches.

“Oof,” he says, after they finish up a thread about Area 51 and living in a simulation, “I really needed that.”

“Yup,” says Pat, drawing it out, and then he hiccups. He’d maybe been hitting the beer pretty hard, at first trying to keep up with Brian, and then settling for regular drunk.

Brian, as it happens, is teetering on the edge of _utterly sloshed_ , as the lovely denizens of places across the pond would say. “Simone said,” Brian starts, and then pauses, collects himself, tries not to slur quite so absurdly. “She said we usually come into work together. Like, after fucking. Or maybe the fucking was the night before, she was unclear.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, so I think—just for Brian of this world, I want him to be happy—I should stay at your place tonight. And then we’ll wake up somewhere else anyway, probably together. So it doesn’t even matter.”

Pat tilts his head, then nods like he can’t find any reason to disagree. “I bet you have a toothbrush at my place in this world, huh.”

“Sweeeeet.”

They do manage to stumble to Pat’s after paying their tabs (and tipping absurdly—sorry, Brian of this world’s bank account). Brian has a toothbrush there, and pajamas, and a change of clothes for work to boot.

Brian remembers getting ready for bed, remembers the warm line of Pat’s body against his when he leaned into it, remembers Pat’s little hum and how he didn’t push Brian away, actually wrapped an arm around him, and how comfortable it was, and how his brain spoke up again, saying _love, love, happy, safe_ … but he doesn’t remember falling asleep.

It just happens, and then he’s somewhere else.


	2. astronaut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yeah, it’s not an insignificant amount of time to spend with one person.”
> 
> “No,” agrees Brian. He can feel the slightest pulse of his heart in his throat. “It’s not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overwhelmed by the kindness & enthusiasm y'all have shown for this story!! Posting a little early (it's still Saturday night in my time zone) because tomorrow is busy, so here is the new chapter :) Many thanks to Scooter for helping me wrangle this! Love y'all, I hope you enjoy <3
> 
> Content warnings for this one: claustrophobia (non-POV character), some short but graphic descriptions of hypothetical violence

Opening his eyes is a shock. “Pat?” he says, first thing out of his mouth, because he’s not hungover and he’s not at home or at Pat’s apartment and this room is absolutely, completely dark, and silent. He could be anywhere, and he could be _alone_ , and—

A shuffle. “Brian?”

“Oh, thank you baby Jesus. Hi, hello. Anyone else here? Hello?”

No answer.

Some more shuffling, and then a bedside table lamp turns on, illuminating Pat’s face and some of their surroundings. It’s almost all metal, which is the first thing Brian notices. “Do you know what this is? Where we are?” he asks Pat.

“Negative. Fuckin’ cold, though.”

“Yeah, just a bit. 

Pat’s brows scrunch together. “Do you feel weird? Like you’re forgetting something?”

Brian tries to check, scan his body for any feelings that don’t belong to him, and then shrugs. “I don’t think so. You do?” 

“It’s nagging at me. We should explore a little, see what this place is.”

“Yeah,it’s definitely weird. I’m starting to think our jokes about UFOs weren’t so far off.”

If Brian didn’t know Pat quite so well, he’d have missed the way the other man pales at that. “Don’t tempt fate like that, Brian. Why would you say that?”

“I didn’t know you were an alien truther.”

“I wasn’t a multiverse truther, either.”

Brian chuckles. “Point taken. C’mon, let’s see what we’re up against, Ripley.”

“Okay, I’m not mad at that comparison.”

“A strong woman with a can-do attitude, who would’ve guessed,” quips Brian, checking his night table for any hints, like a journal or something. No dice, though; it’s just an empty water bottle and a blank stack of Post-Its. Not even a phone or anything.

Pat huffs, crossing his arms. “I have lots of types, thanks very much. Just because some of them are more consistent than others…”

Before Brian can even figure out what he’s supposed to glean from that, Pat has found another light, and the rest of the room comes into focus.

It’s small, enclosed, no windows and just the one door by Pat’s bed. There are two cots, two desks, and a flickering overhead lamp, which is connected the switch Pat flipped, along with another lamp in the back corner that’s currently off.

“Prison?” guesses Brian, before his brain connects to his mouth. “Okay, probably not prison.”

“This would be a pretty avant-garde prison. Come on, we gotta check the rest of this place out.”

Their subsequent exploration reveals a narrow hallway, off of which they find a tiny bathroom, a rudimentary kitchen, and a room that Brian all but bursts into.

“The thing I forgot is in here,” Pat explains, following closely. “It’s— this, I think. Over here.”

Brian follows. He’s not sure what it is that he’s looking at, exactly. It’s an aquarium, with a triumphant seaweed plant sitting in the middle, flowing lazily with the waves. This _is_ important, Brian knows, but he has no idea how, and nothing about the object itself rings any bells for him. Maybe if he feels around inside—

“Don’t touch it!”

Brian startles, pulling his hand away. “Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s mine,” says Pat. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s my experiment. And that I named my seaweed.”

“Oh? What’d you name it?”

Pat shuts his eyes and turns his palms out like surrender, like _okay, make fun of me, I wouldn’t blame you_. “Her name is Pizza, and I hate myself.”

“Awww,” coos Brian. “That’s so terrible, and so adorable. What are you trying to learn from her?”

“Not sure. Something cool, though, about— ahhhhh, fuck, are you claustrophobic?”

Brian takes a half step back. “I’m sorry?”

“Are you?” insists Pat. There’s an element of realization in his eye that Brian doesn’t love, especially paired with a question like that.

“Not really,” says Brian. “What, are you about to shove me in a closet or something?”

“Not really _for real_? I’m trying to decide something, but if you’re lying then you probably won’t like what I’m gonna say.”

“I’m fine,” says Brian, with some modicum of confidence. “I don’t like being forced into tiny spaces against my will, but I’m usually fine. Now will you please tell me what was so exciting that you stopped mid-sentence to curse about?”

“This,” gestures Pat, pointing the small, circular window that Brian hadn’t noticed at first, too engrossed in the experiment and niggle of forgetting something, “is a submarine. And we are currently way, way underwater.”

“That’s wild. And kind of cool, actually.” And then Brian catches up with himself, notices Pat’s eyes darting around, notices the tense line of Pat’s spine, hears the edge of a waver in his voice as he speaks. “Wait, are _you_ claustrophobic?”

Pat nods once, jerkily. “I have no clue why this version of me is apparently a marine biologist. Dickhead.”

“I don’t think I’m a scientist,” muses Brian. The lab setting, the experiments, it’s all familiar, but that’s from a different life. Here, Brian doesn’t think he ever set foot in a proper science building.

“What are you, then?”

“Not sure.”

“Okay,” says Pat, and it’s quick, a thread of panic still lingering in his tone. If Brian knows Pat at all, and he thinks he does, then Pat will carry this quietly in an effort to smother it until he’s alone, which...well, it works when they’re home and Pat has his own bedroom, sure, but if it really is the two of them on a small submarine craft, then the odds of Pat being successful in this endeavor are astronomically low.

And so Brian decides to intervene. “What do you need to be less freaked out by this?”

Pat’s breath leaves him in a rush. He doesn’t play dumb, just takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes with a tired hand. “A distraction, maybe.”

Brian smiles. “Oh, that I can do. You’re with the right guy. What are you looking for? Bad accents? Freestyle dancing? Improv slam poetry?”

Brian is very much joking, hopes this is enough of a distraction in and of itself (because he could keep this train going for a _long_ time), but Pat is actually thinking about it. “If you could—” he starts, and then cuts himself off with a self-conscious grimace.

Silence. Brian waits, but Pat doesn’t continue right away, just keeps his eyes focused determinedly on the wall across from him like he’s trying to stare a hole through it. 

Here’s the issue: no matter how that sentence ends, Brian would bend over backwards without a second thought, would contort himself in all kinds of uncomfortable directions to make Pat happy. It’s one of the unfortunate things about this situation, because Brian thinks—just when he’s finally found a pattern in all of this—that it won’t even help anything. It’s like a cosmic joke, cruel, hilarious, that Brian’s heart won’t stop trying to beat out of his fucking chest for Pat. This crush has gotten a _little_ out of hand, he thinks, edging on hysterical. They’re together on a submarine half a mile underwater. There’s nowhere to go, and Brian wouldn't want to anyway, is so greedy for Pat’s attention even as it aches like a fist digging into some soft place under his ribs, and isn’t that a hell of a punchline.

“Sing to me?” asks Pat, and he’s not quite blushing but he looks like he could be in a different light. “Only if you want.”

Brian clears his throat, brings himself back. “Have you ever known me to not take every excuse to sing?”

Pat’s answering smile is lopsided, sweet. “I guess not.”

“Exactly. Here, just give me a minute to think.”

Pat nods, goes quiet, and Brian’s brain kicks up again.

The song choice feels fraught when Brian is having trouble averting his gaze from Pat’s shoulders, the line of his collarbone. This is, maybe, turning into something more than what he thought.

It probably shouldn’t count as anything to seriously worry about if Brian has felt this way since before he met Pat. People get crushes on internet celebrities all the time, don’t they? Why should this be any different? Hell, he included Pat’s content in his cover letter video—you don’t do that if you have feelings for someone.

But it’s a false equivalency. Not even Brian gets stuck far enough in his head that he can pretend to equate the two; there’s a massive difference between thinking someone’s work is funny and smart and that they’re hot and quick-witted and you’d like to know them, and...wherever Brian is now. Some part of him had almost been hoping, when he started working at Polygon, that all of them—and Pat in particular—would lose their sheen, would annoy him or distract him or not be quite so great up close. 

But Pat’s not only funny, he’s quick enough to punch up with his jokes, and he knows Brian well enough by now to keep him in stitches near-constantly. Pat’s not only smart, he’s humble in a way Brian has never, ever known how to be. Pat is everything Brian thought he would be and more, and Brian is loud and brash and takes up so much space, bursts through doors, never knows how he feels about half the social interactions he even participates in. How do people see him, really? How does Pat see him? Is there really anything under the shiny face of Unraveled? He’s been working so hard to hone it he’s worried the rest of him is going voiceless in its wake.

And while they’re universe jumping, the opportunities to deal with his messy feelings are few and far between. It’s just the two of them. It’s already tenuous. There’s so much to lose.

Brian has lived a pretty charmed life, he thinks, and yet he knows from experience that you don’t get to have everything you want just by virtue of wanting it badly enough. Brian wants this, and it can only hurt. He doesn’t know what to do.

Across from him Pat’s shoulders are hunching up again. He must be thinking a little too hard about their surroundings.

Brian takes a couple more seconds to think, closes his eyes, and starts to sing.

/

A few hours and a mediocre meal consisting of creamed eggs and some wilting greens later, Brian finds his notebook.

“Ohhhh,” he says, and the uncertain niggle in the back of his head finally settles. “I knew I wasn’t a scientist.”

“No?”

“Nah.” He flips a few pages deeper and starts to read aloud. “ _Day twelve: The seaweed is doing fine, or so Doctor Patrick Gill tells me from across our tiny breakfast table. He’s eating toast, same as every day, and I’m taking tentative sips of the sludge that passes for coffee down here._

_“‘Each of the tanks is behaving as expected,’ Gill tells me, raising his eyebrows sexily over the rims of his glasses—”_

“You absolutely did not write that,” interjects Pat. 

Brian grins guiltily. “Okay, that was an embellishment. But I have stuff like this for every day. I must be writing some long form article about your experiment.”

“Convenient,” muses Pat. “Anything in there on why we’re down here? Or how I apparently got a doctorate?”

Brian holds up a finger, continuing to flip and skim over his own god-awful handwriting, and finds that Pat is working for none other than NASA, running an experiment on plant life in extreme conditions to see how viable it would be to grow things like seaweed in space. Something about recreating a biome beyond our atmosphere—Brian doesn’t follow all of it, with how quickly he’s turning the pages, but there’s no doubt it’s really impressive. Brian’s here on behalf of a new publication devoted exclusively to long reads that endeavor to make science news more digestible to the general public, which is pretty cool in and of itself. 

“So?” asks Pat, impatient.

Brian makes him wait a little longer, then winks when Pat huffs. “You work for NASA, and your doctorate is from Harvard, dang. Not sure where you got your undergraduate degree, but you’re fancy as hell.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. You’re not into science?”

Pat shrugs. “It can be cool. I didn’t think I’d ever trap myself in a death tank for it, though.”

“We’ll be fine,” says Brian. That raises some interesting questions about life and death while cycling through universes, but he doesn’t think Pat would take charitably to his musings about what might happen after they get crushed to death by metric ton upon metric ton of icy black water. The thought sends a chill down Brian’s spine, even, and he refocuses. “Whatever you’re doing, it seems like it’s going pretty well.”

“Happy day,” deadpans Pat.

“Hush, you.” Brian keeps thumbing through the notebook, ignoring Pat, and finds that, around Day Thirty-two, the entries start to shift in tone.

Where they started as a factual, descriptive account of Brian’s days below the surface, they shift into something far more subjective, even embarrassing at times.

_Day Thirty-three: The coffee pot broke this morning. It’s a piece of junk, leftover from a previous voyage this craft took—turns out not even NASA money is enough to build a whole new craft for a three month experiment on seaweed—but we’d been hoping it would hold up a little longer. It’s hard to feel awake down here, even with the lights on a timer and the sunlamp in the bedroom doing its part to trick our bodies into believing we’re not so deep down in an uninhabitable space._

_Except it is habitable, because Gill and I are, in fact, living down here together. He’s working on fixing the pot right now, and I have the utmost faith in him. He’s strong, well-hewn from a life that started on a farm in New England. The way he tells it, he chopped firewood every other night, and carried buckets of water from the nearby well for his family from the time he was old enough to do so without dropping any along the way._

_But there’s another side of Pat, one that has given itself over to his more scientific pursuits. He’s meticulous, detailed, careful with his work. When his eyes are on something, you can practically feel the weight of his entire attention focusing in on it, and the brunt of it is a heavy thing when you’re asked to carry it yourself. Heavy, but comforting._

_Later today, we’ll likely play cards again. The tally is close to even, but I’m winning by a handful of games. Pat’s competitive, though, so there’s no guessing what will happen—I’ll update the score tomorrow._

…

_Day Forty-one: I am beginning to think that Pat and I were destined to meet. It’s a bold claim, and a mostly facetious one, but at least let me explain my reasoning._

_The only person that has ever kept me laughing so consistently on such (literally, and sometimes figuratively) dark days as these is my older sister. Her, and now Pat. That’s it. End of list. I went to college, then got a masters, spent hours and hours at bars with friends and some ill-advised book club meetings and sports games – all manner of things – but so many of those moments pale in comparison to being down here with Pat. We crack each other up. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that I look at him and see sunlight thousands of feet below water._

_..._

“Anything good?” asks Pat. He sounds remarkably patient. Maybe it’s just Brian that wilts like a neglected house plant when he’s not being paid attention to.

Brian’s face threatens to burn, and he closes the notebook as casually as possible. “Just a bunch of gibberish, really. Science stuff.”

“Oh. Well, maybe I can parse it.”

“With your scientist brain.”

“Yeah, sure,” says Pat. “See what I’m working with.”

Brian can, under no circumstances, show Pat this notebook. “I mean,” he says, a little hopeful and a lot desperate, “what if we just talk? About our lives here? Maybe something will shake loose and we’ll say things we didn’t know we knew.”

Pat’s face twists thoughtfully. “Like a hypnosis-type thing?”

“Or just a conversation.”

He can see the moment Pat decides it’s worth a shot, because the lines of Pat’s face crinkle a bit before relaxing. Brian should maybe not be staring quite so much. He doesn’t know if it’s his brain or his body that’s so intent on documenting every little detail of Pat’s reactions to things, but the distinction won’t matter if he gets caught. 

They end up settled on the cots in their bedroom. Pat seems more comfortable in a room without windows (and, by extension, without the ever-present reminder of what lies outside the metal shell of the submarine), and Brian pulls his legs up to his chest and hooks his arms around them.

“I like being here,” he starts tentatively. “I’m pretty sure about that.”

“Are we, like, roleplaying here? Pretending to be the people of this world, and see what happens?”

“Sure,” says Brian. It’s easy to listen to Pat, to let him make the call. He’s just along for the ride. “Um, seaweed’s looking good.”

Pat snorts, an ugly-laugh that seems like it takes even himself by surprise and that Brian wants to keep in a portrait locket next to his heart. “Gee, thanks. I like your secret notebook. You never share anything in there with me.”

“It’s not your business! You’ll get to read the article when it comes out.” 

“So you like it down here?” There’s a glimmer of nerves in Pat’s expression.

Brian nods, feels his mop of hair bob with the motion. “It’s fun, and reconceptualizing the same setup in writing every day is a cool challenge. Plus, I like seeing you geek out over your plants. It’s cute.”

“Cute?” asks Pat.

Brian shrugs a shoulder, determined not to be embarrassed about this. “Yeah. You seem to really like the experiment, or at least find it interesting.”

“I do. And I don’t really understand why.” Pat grimaces a little, breaking character to rub at his face. “I mean, you’re the one who was in labs and shit in college. What the hell happened that I ended up here instead of all the other places I could’ve been?”

“I don’t know.”

“I feel happy. But I don’t get how that’s possible.”

Brian ignores the sting. “I was so excited,” he says instead, slipping back into character, “when I found out my pitch got accepted, and this article was cleared on both ends. We— we’d met, or talked on the phone maybe— and I just thought you were so cool. I wanted to listen to you talk about your work for forever.”

Pat’s expression does something then, softening or breaking open, but it only lasts a fraction of a second before it settles back into neutral. Blink and you miss it. Brian has always envied Pat that he can control his face the way he does, where Brian’s an open book in so many ways. He never learned how to hide. All he can do is deflect.

“I’m glad you’re here,” says Pat, so sincerely that it brokers no argument. “I think you’ve been keeping me sane. I didn’t...want to do this alone.”

“I don’t blame you. I think we still have another month left down here, too.”

“Yeah, it’s not an insignificant amount of time to spend with one person.”

“No,” agrees Brian. He can feel the slightest pulse of his heart in his throat. “It’s not.”

He pulls his knees tighter to his chest, wills away the goosebumps on his arms. It’s sinking in now that he and Pat are practically the only people in the world for how far away they are from everyone else. How long would it take to get back to the surface? And then how long to land?

Pat frowns. “You ‘kay?” he asks, concerned and a little cutesy like he’s trying to nudge Brian out of his own head.

Brian lets himself be nudged. “I’m ‘kay,” he answers. “Do you wanna play cards, maybe? According to my notebook we do that a lot. And I’m winning.”

“Now that sounds like a lie.”

Brian grins, lets it be cheeky. “Wanna prove it?”

“Loser makes lunch.”

“Deal,” says Brian, because making ridiculous bets around games is their bread and butter, and if there’s anything he needs right now, it’s an anchor to hold onto, even this far underwater.

/

That night, lights off, the two of them lying in their respective beds, Brian has trouble falling asleep.

“Pat?” he asks, reaching out into the darkness.

The reply is sleepy, a half-mumble. “Mmmhm?”

“Do you think there’s a reason it’s us?”

There’s a pause before Pat answers. “What do you mean?”

Brian has to screw up his courage to answer, but it’s easier to do so when they can’t see each other’s faces. “I mean,” Brian says to the shadowy lump on the other cot, only barely distinguishable from the rest of the inky room, “why us? And why together? Are we supposed to be— I don’t know, learning something from each other? Or about each other? We could each be doing this alone.”

Pat shifts, and Brian can hear the faint sound of rustling as the sheets accommodate him. “I don’t think I could do this alone.”

“If you had to, though—”

“I wasn’t lying earlier,” continues Pat, cutting Brian off not-unkindly. “I like routine. I like knowing what’s coming, and practicing so I can be good at something. This is...nothing like that. But you being here makes it feel more like an adventure than a prison. So I can deal.”

There’s more under that that goes unsaid, but Brian hears it anyway.

“I don’t know why this is happening,” says Brian, “but I am glad it’s us. You and me. Just– just so you know.”

“Me too.”

Brian can’t tell if Pat is smiling, just a little, too, but he hopes, and feels stupid for hoping, and falls asleep with that conflict tangled messy in his chest while the ocean surges dispassionately around them for miles and miles and miles more.

/

When Brian comes back into his body, he stumbles.

“Pat?” he asks, sheer instinct now, heart pounding, blood racing, hands skidding across the ground as he desperately tries to right himself. Water soaks through his clothes, and wind whips at every inch of exposed skin like burning needles. He’s shivering, and he’s sweating. His feet hurt. His lungs ache.

He’s been running.

He’s under an awning, maybe, something protecting him from the full brunt of the rain, but it still slams into him with impunity.

“I’m here,” says Pat, from right next to him, and Brian sags with relief. “Shit.”

“Hi. Oh my god. Hey.” He turns to look at Pat, and—

There’s a long moment where Brian thinks he’s bumped his head on something, hard. The landscape won’t resolve into clarity even as he blinks again, again, again. He rubs his eyes vigorously until he feels a hand pulling at one of his wrists, tugging it back down to Brian’s side.

“You okay?”

Brian scrubs some rain off of his face with his free hand. “I lost my glasses,” he says plaintively. “Fuck, Pat, my vision is _really_ bad.”

The hand on him settles, fingers wrapping properly around his forearm. “We’ll be fine. I’m gonna keep holding onto you, and we’re gonna go together. But we gotta keep moving. I think it’s getting worse out there, and this isn’t somewhere we wanna be for that.”

“Pat,” says Brian again. His hands won’t stop shaking. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for.

“I’ve got you,” Pat says firmly. His blurry form steps right in front of Brian, so close Brian can almost make out some of the details of his face. “But we gotta go. Okay?”

Brian sucks in a deep breath. Pat must be feeling the same urgency, the anxiety that if they stay here the storm will swallow them up and it’ll be as if they were never here at all. It’s not fair. It’s terrifying. Brian screws up his courage and says, “Okay.”

And they take off running.

/

Every breath burns. Brian of this world doesn’t seem to be in any better shape than he usually is, and again he finds himself wondering what happened here. His feet slam against the hard, wet asphalt. No cars line these streets. No sirens wail, and the lights don’t seem to be flickering. 

“Is there anyone else here?” Brian shouts over the whipping wind, the crashing rain.

“No!” Pat shouts back. “Just us! But I think we left and came back!”

Brian screws up his face, panting around the pull of his mouth. “We’re just video producers!”

That startles a laugh out of Pat—Brian can feel his steps stutter through their linked hands, a point of contact, of warmth. “I know!”

“Why would we do that?” yells Brian, giggly, breathless.

“No idea!”

It’s nice to laugh—maybe even essential—as the sky darkens and Brian is soaked through to the point that he’s shivering helplessly under his windbreaker and all these layers. The sun is setting, maybe; it’s hard to tell when everything was already so dark to begin with. But they keep moving.

If Pat’s worried about the day ending, he doesn’t say. His hand is an anchor. Brian holds on.

/

After a quick conversation during one of their walk-breaks (which have become more and more common as the day wore on), Brian’s stomach rumbles, and he practically begs Pat to stop for the night. “We’ll _die_ ,” he says, maybe a touch dramatic. He’s tired, sue him. “I swear we’re gonna die if we keep going at this pace, Pat. We’re not even gonna be here tomorrow.”

“We might,” says Pat darkly, but the effect is likely amplified by the way his black, wet hair sticks to his cheeks, his jaw. “But we do need to find somewhere to settle down for the night. Do you think any of these houses are occupied?”

“I can’t see a dang thing,” says Brian brightly. “So I can’t help you there. We could check?”

Pat sighs. They make their way under another awning. They hadn’t bothered with it after a while, deciding to just go as the crow flies because they were so drenched anyway, but it is easier to hear each other, and the brief respite just makes Brian ache harder for sleep.

“Stay here,” says Pat.

Brian balks. “Um, me? The exhausted me that can’t see anything? Me stay here?”

“I’m gonna go knock on that door. Not too far. I’ll be able to hear you if you yell anything, and you’ll be able to hear me. But if it’s dangerous, we don’t both need to get wrapped up in it.”

Brian feels Pat’s hand extricate itself from his grip.

“Pat—”

“It’s fine,” says Pat. “Just don’t move, and if it sounds bad, then start running.”

Brian throws his hands up. “Run _where_?”

“I don’t know, away from the screaming! Just— I’ll be back in two minutes, promise.”

And then the blurry shape of Pat’s body starts walking away.

Brian’s heart clenches, and he has to take a breath to steady himself, and then another. He takes a couple of steps back, until his back bumps up against the wall of whatever building it is that he’s next to. Pat is, ostensibly, just going next door. He’ll knock on the door, and either find it empty or meet some survivalists who will be able to help.

(Or, whispers the traitorous voice in the back of Brian’s head—

 _Or_ he’ll find someone angry, twitchy, waiting for a fight to come to them, and they’ll see Pat as a sitting duck, all hopeful and tired and eager for a bed. And they’ll grab Pat by the hair or stab him through the stomach or pull a silenced pistol on him and fire once between the ribs or, or, or—

Would it be loud enough? Would Brian even hear it happen? Or would Pat get dragged inside all quiet-like, the door shutting gently behind him, leaving Brian here, in the cold, alone, waiting—)

Brian full-body _flinches_ at the mass of shadow that runs up to him then.

“Whoa, hey, just me.”

“Jeez _Louise_ , Pat, warn a guy.” Brian can’t see Pat’s face well enough to read it, and doesn’t know what his own expression must be doing. Doesn’t think he’d be able to control it even if he could.

A hand, tentative, grips his upper arm. “Sorry. It’s empty. We can go inside for the night.” Pat’s tone is gentle, offered as an apology. With how twitchy he’s been to keep moving, Brian knows that Pat doesn’t want to stop here.

But it’s so cold, and Brian is _so_ tired, and he doesn’t want to be here anymore.

“Okay,” he says, and hates how small his voice is. _I thought you were going to die_ , he doesn’t add, because it’s silly and catastrophizing and Brian is a goddamn adult. _I thought you were going to leave me here alone._

“Okay,” echoes Pat. He winds his hand back with Brian’s and leads him inside the house.

/

It’s small, but dry, cozy. There’s a bit of a draft, but it’s a hell of a lot warmer than outside was, and Brian beelines for the soft form of the couch in the middle of the room and finds that there’s a blanket draped across the back.

“There’s food!” Pat calls, which is unexpected. Blessings on blessings. 

They put together a sloppy dinner, jerky and crackers and some old beers that were hiding in the back of the cabinet, and talk about nothing for a bit. Some of it’s quiet, too, for minutes at a time. Brian finds that he doesn’t mind it.

Eventually, they pilfer around the rest of the house enough to find dry clothes that sort of fit (nothing long enough for Pat’s legs, but that’s not anyone’s fault, really) and curl up under blankets in the bedroom.

It’s hard to get comfortable, though, even with the situation easing up so much. Brian’s feet pulse with a fresh ache on every heartbeat and his head is pounding, and he throws an arm over his face in despair. “Ugh,” he moans eloquently. “How long do we have, again?”

“Six hours, give or take. Hard to tell with the storm, but we need to rest up, so…” Pat sounds like he believes what he’s saying, but not like he’s happy about it. “I can take first watch.”

“Sure,” snaps Brian, sharper than he means to be, “so you can shortchange yourself.”

He’s still mad about earlier, he realizes. About Pat’s self-sacrificing martyr complex, how he does things without thinking, how he figures it’s fine if he’s the only one getting hurt.

Pat doesn’t refute the accusation, but he doesn’t seem all that guilty about it, either, and that’s enough for Brian to stay mad.

“I don’t need you babying me.”

“I’m not— I’m just looking out for you. You need to sleep. Your head must be killing from stumbling around without your glasses all day.”

It is, but that’s beside the point. “You’re the one guiding us. Shouldn’t that be more reason for you to rest?”

The line of Pat’s shoulders hasn’t moved since this conversation started. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am.”

“Why are you being so stubborn about this?” bursts out Brian. “I’m not a kid, Pat, and no one made you my keeper.”

“I’m not trying to smother you, I’m trying to keep us both alive.”

“Well try a little harder!” Brian pauses, takes a breath, doesn’t remember when his heart rate ratcheted up quite so high. “I’m sure it feels nice to play hero, but I don’t _trust you_ with our lives right now.”

The blurry form of Pat’s body reels back like he’s been slapped. Silence reigns between them, undercut only by the incessant racket of the storm outside and Brian’s own shaky breathing. 

When Pat finally speaks again, minutes have passed, and he sounds tired and nothing else, emotionless, guarded.

“I’ll wake you up in three hours.”

“I—”

“Go to sleep, Brian.”

Brian shuts his eyes and rolls over, pulling the ratty blanket tightly over his body. He’s still shivering. It takes a while for him to find his voice again. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Hm?” Still that same carefully neutral tone.

Brian hates it, wants to punch holes in all of Pat’s walls and then some. “I do trust you. God, I can count on one hand the number of people I’d let guide me half-blind through a hurricane, but I didn’t even hesitate with you. It wasn’t— I’m keyed up, and not being able to see didn’t help that. I’m not thinking straight.” Brian pauses, gathers his courage, and stops making excuses. “I only said it because I knew it would hurt your feelings.”

“Jesus,” says Pat quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

No reply. Time passes. Brian’s feet ache. He’s on the very cusp of sleep when he hears, in a voice he’s not sure he’s even heard from Pat before, something small and aching and raw, “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

Brian wants to say something. He has so much to say.

But the universe doesn’t care much for him, which he knows, which he’s known, and he’s forced to carry the ache in his chest with him to the next world, too.

/

“Brian? _Brian!_ Open the door or I’ll drag your ass out myself! Don’t test me!”

Brian comes to himself coughing over a bathroom sink, startled and nervous and wearing a tailored suit, and Tara is yelling at him at the top of her lungs.

His thoughts jump straight into a rush of _listen to Tara do what she says she’s your boss you need her to like you if she doesn’t like you then everything falls apart, make her happy anticipate her needs DON’T keep her waiting come on what are you doing GO—_ and Brian stumbles over to open the door of the bathroom.

Tara bursts in wearing a navy blue dress, long but understated with a neckline that dips precariously low in the middle, and a fierce expression. “Why are you hiding in here?”

“Um,” says Brian. Over her shoulder, he sees the stylings of a Victorian-era house, and swallows down the urge to ask, shaky, nervous, what year it is. He would know, right? If he and Pat had been hurled back in time? Or if he’d been thrown back alone? “I— uh— I’m sorry?”

Tara rolls her eyes. “Finish fixing your hair, James Dean, and get your ass back out there. Simone’s about to walk down the aisle. She might literally kill you if you aren’t in your seat.”

“My seat,” repeats Brian.

“Yes. Your seat. Go.”

Brian looks in the mirror and finds that he looks, well— normal, mostly, thank god, despite the formal wear. Simone’s wedding, then. Tara registers as _Polygon_ in his brain, thank goodness, so they must be in a world that’s not too different from their own, which is a relief after the rollercoaster of the last few. He blinks, blinks again, and realizes he’s wearing contacts.

Probably not the Victorian era, then. Brian heaves a sigh of relief, noticing his phone in his pocket, the cheap rings on his hands and their definitively 21st century plastic. He does, in fact, take a second to fix his hair, but only one, fumbling with the front and trying to get it to lay across his forehead right. “Going,” he says to Tara’s impatient, tapping foot. 

Tara snorts and steps aside, leaving Brian free to pop through the doorway, and watches as he walks through the house toward the backyard ceremony. The house is, indeed, old, but in a way that makes it obvious it’s been preserved. One of the paintings on the wall in the sitting room features a little sign just below it explaining its significance, as if they’re in a museum. Brian would like to stop and look for a moment, both to satisfy his curiosity and to steal another second to breathe before entering another lion’s den, but Tara keeps him moving with an impatient hand at his elbow. 

Brian doesn’t love that she feels the need to go with him to his seat, but she likely doesn’t trust him not to bolt again. He wonders why he was hiding. He wonders what he was hiding from.

He opens the sliding door to a burst of light, harshly juxtaposed against the muted interior of the house. The backyard—and even that word does a disservice to the scene in front of them, how the garden seems to spill out onto the bay, how the flowers and decorations transport Brian to what feels like an entirely different world (ha)—is set up with chairs flanking a long carpet rolled out as a makeshift aisle. It looks like a fairytale, but one where mice live in the shade under toadstools, and every shadow could hide the curse of a witch’s magic. It’s fanciful, quirky, and maybe a little dangerous. Brian is enchanted.

He surveys each row of mismatched chairs, and eventually finds an empty seat near the middle that he recognizes as his own.

Sitting in the seat next to it, hair shiny, suit matching Brian’s, is Pat.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Brian, because Pat looks….better than good. Excellent, gorgeous, hot as all fuck. He’s not the type to wear suits, usually—that’s more Brian’s schtick in Unraveled—and the contrast is all the more intense for it, especially in a situation like this where the setting is already drenched in whimsy from every angle.

Tara nudges him in the back, and Brian realizes he’s been standing there staring for just a hair too long to play off casually. “Come on, kid, we don’t have all day.”

Brian feels himself flush, and begins the terrible and awkward process of nudging his way through the aisle, murmuring _excuse me’s_ the whole way and trying not to bump too disruptively into people’s knees. He’s grateful, for once, that he’s gangly enough to slip past without too much of a headache.

He sits down next to Pat. “Hi,” says Brian, because Pat’s just looking at him, mouth hanging open the tiniest bit. “Found my glasses. Or— my contacts, I mean. I can see again.” For all the good _that’s_ doing him. He can’t keep his eyes off the way the late afternoon light is pouring over everything like molten gold. How it skims Pat’s face, nudges at the line of his throat, alights upon his cheekbones.

Pat looks back for a moment silently, then shakes his head like he’s clearing his mind from any thoughts he’s not in the mood for. “Good,” he says. His voice sounds a little hoarse, and he clears his throat. “Um, do you know whose wedding this is?”

“Simone,” answers Brian. “Not sure who she’s marrying.”

Pat nods, a bob of his head, and keeps looking out toward the front where Simone and her partner will eventually say their vows and tie the knot. Or serenade each other in French and duel each other with rapiers; honestly, anything is possible with Simone, so setting any expectations is just asking to be proven wrong.

While they wait, Brian keeps shooting sneaky looks at Pat’s outfit. Are they matching? It’s hard to tell, until... _ha!_ He notices the pattern of Pat’s tie, and it matches the pocket square in his suit jacket almost perfectly, a cute little paisley in blues and greens that Brian can almost guarantee that he picked out himself and made Pat wear.

They’re dates, then. In any other scenario, Brian would point that fact out immediately, joke about it or ask Pat if they need to make heart eyes at each other again, and how they’re going to convince everyone that the two of them are absolutely one hundred percent over the moon for each other. A few worlds ago, he’d crack a joke about the fact that it doesn’t take much to alter their current dynamic into something more romantic, even sexual at the edges, but after last night and the terrible silences and the way Brian’s heart had been coiled so tightly in his chest that he thought, if he let it uncoil, it would break into a million tiny pieces and hurt not only Brian but everyone around him, too—

Well, he thinks ruefully, that’s not really fair. Since he hurt Pat anyway. Since he meant to.

He’s saved from continuing with his ruminations by the sound of the pianist playing a rousing rendition of a song Brian doesn’t recognize, something equal parts bouncy and haunting that must be...Baroque, maybe? Romantic Classical? Hard to tell.

He twists around in his seat along with the rest of the crowd to see who comes down the aisle.

Brian thinks that maybe he misunderstood Tara when he sees Jenna walking arm in arm with her father. She’s obviously been crying, but her makeup hasn’t budged, fierce electric purple eyeliner complementing her dress, which is a princess cut that’s white most of the way down and transitions into lavender at the bottom. She looks beautiful, and incredibly happy as she dances a little, shoulders shimmying as she walks. A few people high five her as she walks past. Brian smiles at her when she catches his eye, and she blows him a kiss.

When she gets to the end of the aisle, there’s no one waiting for her, and Brian almost goes to look at Pat for _what the hell is going on_ solidarity when he realizes that the piano hasn’t stopped, and no one has turned back around.

The song continues, and out steps Simone.

 _Oh_ , thinks Brian, pieces clicking into place. _Duh._

Simone looks equally happy, equally radiant. Her hair is piled atop her head in an elaborate updo, somehow matching her lacey, shorter dress—it stops mid-shin, and the entire effect makes her look like she stepped out of a make-believe florist shop where the roses talk. 

She can’t stop staring at Jenna, who can’t stop staring back. The whole thing is sappy in a way that tugs at Brian’s heartstrings.

“I’m definitely gonna cry,” he mutters to Pat.

Pat just smiles at him, nudges him with his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything in return, but he doesn’t really have to, not when his own eyes are suspiciously shiny already. Brian doesn’t sag with relief at the small show of camaraderie, but he does take solace in the fact that their relationship hasn’t been irretrievably ruined by the argument they had the night before.

The rest of the ceremony concludes with little fanfare but a _lot_ of obscure poetry, and Brian abso-fucking- _lutely_ cries during the vows. 

They move inside for the reception, led by Simone’s rallying cry of, “Upstairs, bitches! I wanna get drunk and dance with my _wife!_ ”

“Well,” says Brian, “when she puts it like that.”

Pat snorts. It’s graceless and it’s beautiful and Brian’s heart twists looking at him. “Let’s go.”

Upstairs is decked out like if a tea party met a rave and made out with it in a back alley, except the back alley is a quaint historical house. A live band is set up and playing jazzy covers of pop songs, and in lieu of tables with seating arrangements, the food is arranged on a couple of long buffet-style tables. It’s a little Wild West in that fend-for-yourself kind of way, and the press of people has Brian sticking close to Pat’s side.

He can’t stop tugging at his sleeves. “Hoo boy,” he says nervously.

“You all right?”

“Really good. Just excellent.” Pat waits him out, and Brian wilts a little, rubbing at the inside of his wrist. “I’m fine. You know how I get with crowds.”

“Rather be in front of it than in it?”

Brian sighs. “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

Around them, the chatter increases, room filling, and a few waiters start coming around with hors d’oeuvres. Brian takes an olive, plops it into his mouth, and winces.

Pat ignores that in favor of tucking Brian under his arm. “Here,” he says, like he can’t feel the way Brian has gone suddenly still like a startled rabbit, “if the crowd wants to get to you, it can go through me first.”

“Very noble,” Brian manages. Pat is warm against his side.

They do a slow lap of the room like that, and Brian slowly starts to relax. “This one’s not so bad,” says Pat, and it takes Brian a moment to realize that Pat is talking about the day as a whole. He’s right; of all the places they could have dropped—hell, of all the places they’ve woken up already—this is far, far from the worst.

Brian hums an agreement, knows Pat can feel it. “I love weddings. It’s practically a requirement for everyone to go all gooey. It’s cute.”

Pat hums back, and they do a few more laps. Slowly, Brian’s anxiety eases, chest loosening, and he stops clinging quite so tightly to his date. A couple of glasses of wine don’t hurt in that endeavor, either.

And then the dancing starts, and Brian looks up at Pat and tries to convey _we’re dates, you wanna...?_ with a wiggle of his eyebrows. 

Pat sighs, but doesn’t say no, and takes Brian’s hand.

/

This close, with Pat’s hand warm on his waist, Brian isn’t sure he can breathe, let alone have a mature adult conversation where he works through an argument he had with his best friend the night before. In a different universe, to boot. That feels so far away now. The lights in here are dreamy, old-timey, casting an ethereal glow on everything, and Pat is so, so gorgeous.

“I like your suit,” says Brian, because he can’t say what he wants to.

Pat smiles, a little crinkle in his forehead like he’s not sure where Brian’s going with this but is willing to go along for the ride. “Thanks. Yours is nice, too.”

“Ha,” says Brian. “Yeah, because they’re the same.” It’s not a joke that needs explaining, but Brian’s never been good with silence. Underneath their conversation, the song croons a tune of love and surrender. Brian blocks it out as best he can, which is really not very well at all. He can’t help that music gets into his bloodstream. He can’t help the way his body goes soft, swaying, making Pat keep up.

“You good?” asks Pat.

Brian shuts his eyes, smiles a little. “I’m fine. Tired, but I think it’s just…” he waves a hand around vaguely, taking it off of Pat’s shoulder to do so. The tricky part is that he then has to put it back in a way that screams _I’m chill about this_ and not _this is every Victorian romance daydream I’ve ever had and you’re not even in love with me, Pat Gill._ “Emotional hangover.”

Pat nods seriously, eyes never leaving Brian’s. He’s intense all the time, but especially here. Especially now. “Yeah. You feeling better today?”

“What?” asks Brian, taken aback.

Pat doesn’t answer, just raises his eyebrows like _well?_

Brian sighs. “You’re too fucking nice, Pat.”

Pat snorts. “You had a shitty day. Just checking in. Plus, if we’re talking about you, then at least we’re not talking about me.”

It’s surprisingly, refreshingly blunt to hear Pat admit that. 

“I’m all right,” says Brian. “I feel bad about yesterday, though. Still. I mean, I apologized, but I didn’t _apologize_.”

“It’s fine,” answers Pat immediately, “seriously, I’m not mad. It was a bad day all around. I don’t expect you to be cheery during a nightmare apocalypse, Brian. I wasn’t all smiles either, if you’ll recall.”

He’s too fucking nice, thinks Brian again, and lets go of his guilt. He’s said his piece. For now, he’s going to enjoy the way Pat’s hand rests on his waist, tries to forget the way it elevates his heart rate, or at least lean into it. The tangle of contradictions catches in his chest, but he breathes through it, allows the love swelling in him to hurt and heal and all manner of things it wants to do. This night is damn near perfect. Brian’s going to enjoy it. It’ll be hard, but let it never be said that Brian isn’t up for a challenge.

From the far end of the room, a glass chimes as it’s impatiently tapped over and over again by a knife-wielding Simone. Brian backs up, letting Pat go, and turns toward her, careful to keep his expression neutral. “Thank you for coming everyone!” she yells before the mic can get to her. She waves it off, anyway. “We’re gonna bar hop now! 

“If you wanna go home,” adds Jenna, who has commandeered the microphone, “no hard feelings, but say goodbye first!” Her cheeks are pink, and she’s glowing with joy. “Otherwise, we’ll see you downstairs in ten minutes for our first trek!”

“Bar hopping,” repeats Pat, somehow both baffled and completely unsurprised.

Brian can’t help the way he giggles at that, how his laughter bubbles into the air as light as champagne. _I’d like to stay here_ , he imagines saying.

But he says nothing, and Pat doesn’t say it either, and Brian ignores the urge to hold his hand as the two of them stand there in all of that ethereal yellow light in a room that feels love, and love, and love.


	3. denouement i.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian is, he thinks, different now.
> 
> The change is subtle, peeks out when neither of them are looking. It’s in the way Brian’s eyes trace the bow of Pat’s upper lip, almost unconsciously, in moments of quiet. It’s in the way every detail of every moment is...big, loud, too much sometimes. That’s not new, the overwhelm, but it can get crushing, and more often than not Brian feels a desperate yearning inside of himself that he can’t name. What does he want? What is he begging himself for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO DEAR READERS, thank you so much for sticking with me. There are many reasons this chapter is later than anticipated, and one of them is that I still have at least another 10k of story in me after this. This always happens. 
> 
> Anyway, many thanks for your patience and support! As usual, if you like any of the decisions in here chances are that Scooter had a hand in them (<3).
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: allusions to depression, discussion of suicide, depictions of (vague, detached) grief, some allusions to internalized homophobia

When Brian opens his eyes, he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom in New York, and he’s on the phone.

“—eally sorry!” Jeff is saying, effusive and apologetic over the line. “You should still go, though! I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

“What?” asks Brian, his brain not quite yet online. 

“You’ll make friends,” insists Jeff. “Tell me how it went tomorrow.”

Brian goes to argue again, but finds that the call has ended, phone blinking back to its home screen as if to mock him. Sunday, it reads, as if it makes a goddamn difference. _What the hell_ , he thinks, trying to access some secret mind-storage cabinet in his head, but it hasn’t been that simple thus far, so of course it wouldn't be now. If each new world had flashing neon lights above his head (or Pat’s) announcing what the deal is, then Brian wouldn't find himself scrambling for a ledge to carefully edge his way onto every time he opens his eyes.

He looks up around his room, sees everything mostly the same. There’s just one new addition. Behind the desk, tucked up toward the ceiling, a poster sprawls its way across his wall. 

Legacy of Dust, it reads in a script that’s simultaneously blocky and elegant. There’s no clue as to what it might be aside from the words and the art that serves as their backdrop, lines of light piercing a dark backdrop like the outline of buildings in a megacity, sci-fi, exciting, dynamic.

And, well, the author on the cover: Patrick Gill.

Guess the signing might not be such a bad idea, after all.

After some searching on his phone, he realizes he has less than an hour to get ready, and a prickle of anticipation nudges at him from three angles at once. The Brian of this world must be elated, Brian realizes, and terrified too. He must have been waiting for this for so long. His hands are shaking a little where they hang by his hips. Around him, silence. No picking at guitar chords, no quiet thuds from dancing feet, no baby voice cooing at their perfect cat. It’s just Brian’s breathing, this side of too fast, and his whirling thoughts.

Yesterday, he was confronted with Pat in a suit, his arms at Brian’s waist, big hands, solemn gaze— _You take care of me_ , Brian remembers thinking but not saying as Pat led him gently around the room and shielded him from the greedy press of the crowd. 

They’d gone home, after. Took the ferry. Pat let Brian sidle up to him again, press their bodies together, and didn’t say a word about it. Tipsy and exhausted, they just looked at the distant stars and felt the chill of the water in the wind speckle their faces. 

_This was nice,_ Brian had said, quiet, muted.

 _Yeah_ , hummed Pat in response.

And then they’d spent a good half an hour trawling their phones, which were on the edge of dying the whole time, to figure out where they lived. 

And then they’d gone home and fallen asleep in the same bed, Pat’s soft hair tickling Brian’s neck, the backs of their hands nudged up against each other sloppily, Brian’s socks still on, shirt unbuttoned and rumpled, head still swimming with the floaty remnants of intoxication.

And then Brian had woken up alone.

He thinks about it as he fixes his hair, as he buttons up his best floral shirt. As he ties on his leather shoes and finds a copy of Pat’s book on his shelf. He touches the cover...reverently is the only way to describe the way his fingertips trace the slightly raised lettering, drag along its shiny surface. He puts the book back.

He thinks about it on the subway, squished in between a severe-faced businessman and a handsy young couple. He thinks about it walking up the stairs, bracing against the wind, weaving through a throng of people.

He thinks about it when he walks up to bookstore holding the signing, too, and shows his ticket and gets his wristband and goes to stand in line.

“Are you nervous?” asks someone, intercepting him before he manages to get all queued up. 

Brian spins around and sees— a kid, really. Seventeen, eighteen at most. Short and wide-eyed and looking at Brian like they recognize him but don’t want to say anything about that. “Um,” he says, and notices the trans pride flag button on their backpack, the way they’re hovering close to a boy that seems about their age, one hand half-outstretched like they’re not sure if— maybe it’s safe— but only maybe. “A little,” says Brian gently, turning to engage properly with them.

The kid’s face breaks open into a smile. “Gosh, me too. You don’t always get to see, um… I mean, the relationship in it is— it’s— it’s not common to see, uh, anything like…in science fiction, you know? Not with two guys. It means a lot.”

“Yeah,” agrees Brian, because he remembers what it was like. When he was the one clutching a book to his chest with this terrifying hopeful thrill, thinking _I didn’t know I was allowed to have this._ “He’s a good one.”

“I’m Jem,” says the kid, extending a hand. Brian shakes it, introduces himself.

The boy next to Jem steps forward then, shy. “I’m Manuel,” he says, ducking his head. He has six inches on Brian, maybe more, but you’d barely notice with him hunching like this.

“It’s lovely to meet you both,” he says decisively, and sticks with them as the line begins to form in earnest. They hover behind him, and the conversation is stilted at points but still good. Brian learns about their favorite video games, college aspirations, and, with a bit of prodding, dreams beyond even that.

They get so caught up talking about Manuel’s hopes of opening his own catering company that Brian startles when he realizes he’s next in line, and he spins around to see, finally, properly, the man they’re all here to meet.

Traitorously, he feels god-danged butterflies in his stomach when he sees Pat sitting at the signing table smiling attentively at a girl who’s eleven or twelve years old at most. His expression is sweet, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows.

“Well thank you very much,” Pat is saying, long hair flopping into his face. “I can’t wait to read your book someday.”

The girl smiles bashfully, ears going pink—she must have the worst hero crush on Pat, not that Brian blames her. He’s been there. Might still be there in this world. The girl’s mother snaps a picture, and then it’s Brian’s turn to walk up to the table.

He clutches the book tightly to his chest as he does, feeling weirdly shy. “Hey,” he says.

“Hi, thanks for—” Pat looks up, his face visibly relaxing. “Oh, Brian, thank god. You weren’t in my phone, I thought maybe— Jesus, it’s good to see you.” He slumps in his seat, some of the shiny veneer of being at his own event slipping away.

It’s a little embarrassing how pleased Brian is to be recognized. That morning was okay, everything mostly normal. So long as Brian keeps his mouth shut, people seem to believe that he’s just fine, which he guesses is fair. It’s not like he goes around in his day to day trying to figure out if his friends and family have been replaced by impostors. But god, was it terrifying to scroll through is contacts and not see Pat’s name. _Do you think you’d know if you didn’t know me?_ he remembers Pat asking him, worlds and worlds ago, and Brian can now answer that with a definitive yes. But it’s not that he didn’t know who Pat was. Just that this Brian doesn’t know him personally.

Talking to Jeff and actually finding the ticket to the signing in his email had been an exercise in absolute, knees-turning-to-water relief.

“You too,” he says, only a little breathless. He can feel the press of the line behind him, other fans getting impatient. “Here,” he says on a whim, shoving the book forward, “sign this, and put your number in it. I’ll see you after.”

Pat grins. “Dear Brian,” he says as he writes, “thanks for being a fan. So grateful I can count on your support.” He scribbles his digits right below, and then signs with a flourish. “After?” he checks.

Brian nods, though it sends a pang through him to be leaving, to think about walking back out into this huge city without an anchor. “Come to my place when you’re done,” he offers. “It’s the same as— as before,” he finishes awkwardly. _As home_ , he was going to say. He doesn’t know what it is that’s stuck in his throat blocking the word from coming out. This is home, almost. This city, his apartment, Pat shining in that quiet way of his and Brian looking up, up, up to him. If Brian squints hard enough, this could be a home, except for all the ways in which it isn’t.

Brian is, he thinks, different now.

The change is subtle, peeks out when neither of them are looking. It’s in the way Brian’s eyes trace the bow of Pat’s upper lip, almost unconsciously, in moments of quiet. It’s in the way every detail of every moment is...big, loud, too much sometimes. That’s not new, the overwhelm, but it can get crushing, and more often than not Brian feels a desperate yearning inside of himself that he can’t name. What does he want? What is he begging himself for?

Behind him, Brian can feel Jem shifting anxiously, standing on tiptoes to look at Pat, and Brian very intentionally drops his shoulders. “Good luck with the rest of your signing, famous author Pat Gill. And be nice to the kids behind me, they’re sweet.”

Pat rolls his eyes. “I’m always nice. Now get out of here,” he insists, playful, and it’s just light enough that Brian can convince himself to leave.

/

When Brian gets home, he starts to read. It’s eerie, the way the words on the page are both unfamiliar and utterly comforting. It’s good, is the first thing he notes. It’s really fucking good. The gleaming, futuristic cities seem to unfold in front of him, and the main character is just as quick-witted and funny as Pat is. It starts like your run of the mill hero’s journey, but takes a hard turn when the person you thought was the hero really turns out to be...not a villain, but something _else_. An antihero, maybe, but it’s more complicated than that. Brian has to discard literary terms as quickly as he can recall them, because nothing quite fits. This kid, the protagonist, is scared and in love and pushes hard against the things that frighten him, but he won’t pull at the things that don’t, won’t hold them close to his chest, won’t protect his own gentleness, and—

A knock at the door. Brian shuts the book, almost guiltily, and stands up to open it.

“Are you crying?” is the first thing Pat asks. He looks tired but happy, furrow in his brow like he’s bewildered by something. Maybe the tears on Brian’s face. Maybe something else.

Brian swipes hastily at his cheeks. “No,” he lies.

“All right.” Pat walks past him into the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water. He holds up another empty glass, waving it like an offer. Brian shakes his head. Pat nods and puts the glass away. “So what’s your thing here?”

Brian clears his throat before answering. “Still Polygon. Jeff called me this morning, actually, to flake on the signing.”

Pat huffs a laugh. “Some things don’t change, I guess.”

“Seriously. But yeah, still a video producer. And a YA fiction fan, apparently.”

“Do you read? Back home?” Pat asks as he walks over to the couch and sits beside Brian, water in hand.

Brian shrugs. “A little. I used to always have my nose in a book when I was younger. Couldn’t find me without one. College burned me out on reading, though, and now I’m so busy…” he trails off, can’t figure out how to end that sentence.

Pat hums. “Similar for me. Though I don’t know that I could’ve competed with you.”

“Probably not,” Brian acknowledges. 

“So what did you think of, uh, Legacy of Dust?” He says the title of the book like one might hold up a priceless bag in a designer store—not with reverence, or like he’s impressed, but like he’s terrified to drop it.

Maybe, Brian thinks, like he’s scared of what’s inside. Wants to keep the zipper shut.

He spends just a split second trying to decide if he can get away with saying he hasn’t read it, then realizes Pat is looking at the book on the coffee table, and the way the jacket’s tucked inside as a makeshift bookmark. “I’m only a third of the way through,” he says, “but it’s...it’s really good, Pat. And it seems like it matters a lot to a lot of people.” 

Pat maintains a straight face but colors a little. “I read a plot summary online during my lunch break,” he says.

When it becomes apparent he’s not going to continue, Brian nudges him in the side. “And?”

“And I didn’t think I would ever— Jesus, sorry, I’m getting emotional here. Bear with me.” He pauses, and Brian nods a little, waits. Pat takes a slow, deep breath. “I didn’t think it was anyone’s business,” he says eventually, quietly. “Who I am. What I want. I still don’t, but those kids behind you came up to the table and both of them cried and— I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. Fuck, after them I had to go to the bathroom and just stare myself down in the mirror and try to figure out what the fuck I’m doing.”

“What the fuck you’re doing here, or back home?” asks Brian, gently but not too gently.

Pat shrugs once, jagged. His jaw is tight, expression closed off.

Brian doesn’t think he’s going to get anything else out of Pat about that tonight, so he lets it be. Thinks of himself, of the way he felt as a queer kid and how that manifested into what he is now. Thinks of theater practices, how his mom sat him down before Brian even started thinking about coming out and said _we love you no matter what, remember that_ , thinks of summer in the bay and kissing a boy under the pier and how the waves drowned out his heartbeat pounding in his ears. A whole life leading up to this, and Brian’s still not sure about it all. He can’t imagine going from seclusion to out-and-proud from one universe to the next. Wants to ask Pat how he’s handling it, if there’s anything Brian can do to help.

“Dinner?” he asks instead, because he knows Pat, and he knows that some conversations are dead ends.

Pat grunts an affirmative and lifts himself off the couch. “Let’s go to sushi,” he says. “My treat.”

“If you insist, mister moneybags.”

Another eyeroll, but Pat’s shoulders aren't quite so close to his ears anymore. “C’mon,” he says, swinging the door back open into this warm, muggy New York they’ve landed in, and Brian follows him, and that’s that.

/

When they get back to Brian’s apartment, they sit on his bed and watch a couple of alternate-universe Unraveled videos on Brian’s laptop. The series does still exist, technically, even without Pat, but it’s—

“Weird,” comments Pat. “Not bad, obviously, but...different, huh?” 

Brian doesn’t answer, uncomfortably transfixed on his— on the other him. The one on the screen, who has this life, and who decided that he should, in fact, post the mind-numbing one hour video explaining the mythology behind Castlevania’s monsters. It’s not as bad as the one Brian did himself and replaced, swore would never see the light of day, but it’s undeniably boring. And the camera angles are just a little off, not snappy enough, and Brian’s hair is too long but that’s sort of always the case, it’s just— it’s just—

“Bri?”

Brian blinks hard, looks away from the computer screen. “Sorry,” he says reflexively, and then, softer, “yeah.”

Pat squints at him. “You okay?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen actual, physical evidence of a different me. I mean, as physical as the internet is. There I am.” He laughs a little, and it feels far away, like he’s hearing himself from the other side of a deep gorge. “Does he come back as soon as I leave? Is he even gonna know what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Brian sighs, flops back against the bed. He can hear Pat carefully shut the laptop and put it on the nightstand, and then feels the shift of the mattress as Pat lies on his side next to him, strangely delicate in his movements like he’s scared to seen or heard. They haven’t lain together like this sober before. Brian wonders if Pat will want to sleep here, or if he’ll go to the couch. If he’ll crack open a bottle of whiskey in the spirit of plausible deniability.

Pat has taken his glasses off, Brian notices. His eyes are big and dark.

Brian _aches_.

They lie there in the quiet for a few minutes, Brian trying to pick apart exactly what it is that’s getting him worked up. He keeps getting distracted, though, by the chill of the air conditioning in the room, the scent of the bedsheets. _This isn’t even my body_ , he thinks, and his face must give something away, because Pat props up on an elbow.

“I’m not really tired,” says Pat.

Brian thinks he’s lying, but isn’t sure enough to call him out on it. “Me neither,” he says, which is also a lie, but he thinks Pat knows what he means by it.

They stay up for awhile, talking about innocuous things. The weather that day, places they want to travel, movies they’ve seen in the past year. Little things. Casual.

Brian’s heart slowly returns to its normal rate. He’s still not tired, though, or at least he doesn’t want to sleep.

“How long can we stay here, do you think?” he asks.

Even after so many existential questions over the course of this last week, Pat doesn’t seem annoyed. “Wanna find out?”

Brian grins. “Maybe you _are_ a scientist at heart, Pat Gill.”

Pat shoves at him half-heartedly, and Brian prays Pat can’t see the blush that he can feel blooming over his cheeks. God, these fucking reactions. He hasn’t landed in a world yet where his fingers aren't itching to reach for Pat, thread through his hair or trace the sharp line of his jaw. Brian has spent so much time in the last year begging himself to get a grip, burying his attraction so deep he swears he forgets about it some days, and now his _evil clones_ are out to sabotage him on a vacation he never asked for. It isn’t fair.

The bed is soft. The mood is sweet, gentle. None of this belongs to him.

“Sorry, I’m trying to figure out what to say,” says Brian, because if he doesn’t disrupt the sweetness in this moment he might sink straight into it. “I can’t think past all of this.”

Pat hums like he understands.

“It’s—” starts Brian, then cuts himself off, tries again. “I don’t understand why this is happening. Are we missing something? Is it obvious, and we’re just— focusing on the wrong things?”

Pat scoots a little closer, and their knees bump together, a point of solid warmth. Brian hangs onto it like an anchor, and thinks again, _focusing on the wrong things_. “We’re really different.”

“Hm?”

Pat smiles a little, maneuvers his arm until he can run a hand through his own hair. “You and me. We’re different. You’re so invested in narrative. You make sense of things through story.” His voice lowers, like he’s getting sleepier, or he’s embarrassed. Always hard to tell with Pat. “I really like that about you.”

“Oh,” says Brian. He feels a bit like Pat has reached right into his chest and wrapped his fingers around Brian’s heart.

“Means you wind yourself up, though. I know it probably sounds ridiculous coming from me, but you don’t need to run yourself into the ground trying to figure this out. Hell, maybe the point is just to be here. Maybe whatever we learn is just...I don’t know, incidental.”

The joke Brian wants to make gets stuck in his throat. “I don’t love that,” he says.

Pat laughs a little. “Yeah, me neither.”

“This whole time,” says Brian, “you’ve been so calm. You say you’re pretending, but like. Not all the time, right? Not for days and days straight?” He waits for Pat to give a little shake of his head before continuing. “How, then?”

There are a lot of things Pat could say, and Brian starts playing them out, guessing, can’t stop himself from wondering what will come next in the conversation. What he’ll have to parlay while he’s feeling like this, vulnerable and small and tired and so desperate not to sleep. Maybe Pat will say _I‘m just a steadier person than you are_ , since he’d honestly be right to. Maybe, instead, he’ll try to be kind about it, say that he just wants to help Brian get through this with no regard for himself, the way he did when they were staying up after spending all day running from something that Brian can’t explain and doesn’t care to. Or maybe...maybe he’ll say _I’ve never been calm, it’s all a lie, you’re the only person I trust with this so let me lay it all on the line—_

“You make it easier,” says Patrick, finally.

Brian’s brain quiets for a moment. “I do?” he says, and immediately feels himself flush. He sounds like a kid, unsure of himself in that way he’s tried so hard to burn out of his body.

“Yeah,” answers Pat.

He doesn’t offer anything else, just maintains eye contact, and all at once this is too much to handle. The quiet, the thread of the moment, how Brian wants to yank at it and pull but can’t for fear of breaking _everything._ If Brian lets himself feel this, he’ll never be able to put it back in its box. 

He turns away, heart sinking, and shuts his eyes against it, and he—

/

Brian flinches into the back of a couch.

He has to brace a hand on it, a startled sound getting punched out of him as he stumbles, and his other hand goes over his heart as he tries to gather himself. The couch is brown and squishes down beneath his hand, feels soft and lived-in. Or lived-on, he guesses. “Jiminy _cricket_ ,” Brian complains under his breath.

Though maybe not under his breath enough, because he finds out he’s not alone by the sound of Pat’s disbelieving laughter.

Brian’s head snaps up to see

“You’re something else,” says Pat, wiping at his eyes. 

Brian giggles a little too, can’t help it, because everything is fucking ridiculous and they’re in a house he doesn’t recognize and Brian knows he swears like an eighty-year-old but it’s not like he can help it.

And then, as quickly as the mirth had come, it vanishes. Pat blinks like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on.

Brian’s laugh dies in his throat, and he reels, because there was something he didn’t notice at first. “Do you— are you feeling like...um, Pat?”

Pat clears his throat. “Like my chest went through a trash compactor?”

“Yeah, but emotionally.”

“Yeah.” Pat is wearing a flannel, reds and blacks, a little oversized. It looks warm. “Fuck, where are we?”

He looks groggy as he scrubs a hand over his face, but it doesn’t seem early in the day based on the light outside. Hard to tell, since it’s overcast. Seems like it’s maybe one or two in the afternoon, though. Brian shifts his gaze to their surroundings, and finds that they’re in what looks to be a log cabin. The ceilings are high, and it’s made of wood. Almost everything is made of wood—rich, dark, textured wood—from the walls to the ceiling to the flooring. The furniture is soft and rustic. Out the window, it’s water as far as Brian can see.

“Pretty,” he comments.

Pat nods, but the furrow in his brow doesn’t disappear. “Do you know this place?”

“No,” says Brian, “but it doesn’t feel weird to be here.”

“Feels like home, a little.”

“Yeah.”

Pat’s eyebrow quirks. “For you too?”

“Yeah,” says Brian quietly. He feels quiet here. Kind of wants to curl up into a ball and cry, and can’t explain the impulse to himself. “What, um. What happened? Something happened, right?”

“I don’t know,” answers Pat. “I think so.” He’s speaking slowly, perking up slowly—Pat’s far from bubbly most of the time, but he’s not usually despondent like this, and it makes Brian nervous to feel a pit in his own stomach, too. Something hurts, and it hurts like grief.

Brian swallows once, hard, and says, “Actually, I don’t think I want to know.”

Pat nods slowly, agreement, and sighs. “I’m gonna look around.”

“All right,” says Brian.

Pat walks out of the living room and back toward the hallway where Brian assumes the bedroom must be. Brian does some puttering around of his own, staying in the common area, and then he follows Pat back to the master bedroom. Pat doesn’t say anything from his perch on the bed, so Brian looks around. The room itself is big, spacious, but Brian goes to the bathroom first. He finds a double sink, two toothbrushes in the cup in the middle, and a little Post-It note off to the side. _Love you!_ it reads cheerily, in Brian’s handwriting. He doesn’t know what to make of it, and Pat doesn’t seem to have any answers where he’s lying down flipping through what looks like a popular science magazine.

Brian wanders over by the bed, and his left hand brushes it. He hears the unmistakable clink of metal against wood, and looks down to find an understated metal band adorning his finger. It’s one he’s never seen before.

Huh. Looking at it gives him the first flash of emotion since they stopped laughing that’s not utter sadness, so he endeavors not to overthink it.

Brian walks back to the living room and around the side of the couch, sits down on it, and rests his head on the soft arm. Maybe if he falls asleep now, he’ll wake up somewhere else. That would be nice, he thinks, so he shuts his eyes and hopes.

/

He wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later. The light through the window doesn’t seem too different, so it could’ve have been that long, but it’s jarring to wake up in the same place. Brian finds he’d missed sleeping. It’s nice, to be a little groggy mid-day. It’s been a while.

He hoists himself up off of the couch, pours a glass of water, downs it in three gulps, and heads off to search for Pat. A cursory glance around the living area proves it empty, no one in the dining room or kitchen, and Brian only glances in the bedroom and bathroom in the back. “Pat?” he calls absently. No answer.

Fear grips him. This is the same place, isn’t it? He hadn’t fallen asleep and left Pat behind, right? He spins on his heel, ready to yell louder, when he sees a lump wrapped in a blanket sitting on the front porch. Brian goes to investigate, and finds himself awed by the stillness of the scene. 

He recalls running, in that wasteland. Three universes ago, maybe four. It’s hard to remember now, the days pouring together like snowmelt, and that was— it was bad, mostly. Hard, exhausting. But they could laugh through it.

Brian doesn’t think he remembers how to laugh here.

It seems like the kind of day where sadness has room to swell. Brian feels his already sore heart bloat like an overfull raincloud as he looks over the water. In the distance, he spots a lighthouse. Next to him, another lighthouse, Pat’s wide and distant gaze, the way they’ve anchored to each other. There’s something in the twist of Pat’s expression that Brian is scared to ask about. After all, Pat’s the one who puts the pieces together. He’s the one who, without even trying half the time, catches glimpses of these other lives. The other worlds, mostly, are an adventure. Fun, new, exciting.

This place just feels like an old bruise.

Brian sighs. Doesn’t check his phone, or as questions. Just parks himself in the doorway and watches the wind thread through Pat’s hair.

“Are we–” he starts to say, and then thinks better of it, cuts himself off. He reaches down to fiddle with the ring on his left hand. It’s an unmissable addition to his everyday outfit. His brain is going twenty miles a minute, heart pounding. The couch. The one bedroom. The days-of-the-week pillboxes on the counter. The ring. Oh god, does Pat have–

When Brian looks over, Pat is very quiet. The waves crash, almost greyscale, on the early spring shore outside of the cabin. Brian stares at him, bundled in a blanket on the porch, looking out over the coastline, and he looks smaller than Brian is used to. Curled in on himself. Like he doesn’t think anyone is watching, even though Brian is standing right there. The wind whips Pat’s now-short hair, the longer pieces of the undercut getting caught in his glasses. When he raises a hand to push it back, a silver band on his ring finger, inscription matching Brian’s, catches the dull, overcast light.

“Yeah,” says Pat belatedly. “There are…” he waves a hand vaguely back toward the hallway by the master bedroom, the one leading back to what looked like a laundry room, “pictures. I saw them when I went looking for a clean towel after my shower. You were napping.”

“Wow,” says Brian, mouth dry.

Pat hums a little acknowledgement. “We’re in Maine, by the way.”

Brian blinks. “Well. That’s fun.”

A ghost of a smile from Pat. “I guess.”

 _We should talk about this,_ thinks Brian halfheartedly, but he knows Pat, and he knows himself. Instead, he leans harder on the doorframe and pretends he doesn’t exist at all.

/

So they’re married.

They can’t have been married for too long, Brian would guess, considering his age and what he knows of himself as a human being. Even if they’ve been dating a while, Brian’s in no rush. Whatever twist of fate landed them in this cabin must have also tugged them together more quickly than expected. Or just unlocked something that was already there, just beneath the surface.

“I’m hungry,” he says, yanking himself back from the edge of that particular cliff. They haven’t eaten today, and it’s late afternoon. As he says that, Brian wanders back in through the tall sliding glass doors and finds the kitchen contains mostly dust and shadow. The fridge has some condiments and the freezer has only two bags of frozen vegetables. “We don’t have any food!” he shouts in the direction of the porch.

The floorboards creak behind him as Pat walks in. “You up for a quick trip?” he asks.

“Sure.”

Pat nods once, mostly to himself, and holds out a hand. This time, Brian takes it without hesitation, and he can feel the cool metal band of Pat’s ring, the dry kind of his knuckles. Brian’s hand is warmer than Pat’s. Like this, they fit together like breathing, all instinct and relief.

Brian loves him. Brian has never felt so full of love in his entire goddamn life. It sends of a hell of an ache radiating through his entire body.

They keep holding hands as they walk along the road into town. Brian had found a map earlier as he rustled through the papers on the coffee table, and Pat had been adamant that the trek into town was not only walkable, but well-worn. That they’d done it a million times. As it turns it out, it’s barely twenty minutes before they hit a diner.

When they walk in, the bell above the door dings, so quiet Brian barely hears it himself.

“He decided to go off looking for that truck,” says a woman, short and heavyset with a friendly smile and laugh lines around her eyes. She’s talking to a man at the bar, his cap pulled low over his head. “You know, the one that’s supposedly deep in the woods? Kids these days, putting so much faith in urban legends and not— oh, hello boys! We were starting to think you weren’t coming in today.”

Brian hangs behind Pat a little just by sheer instinct, their hands still linked, and looks for clues. The diner is nearly empty since it’s nearly four in the afternoon, and no one here seems all that stoked to see them, though no one seems surprised or upset either. The woman has turned toward them, apron laying atop a t-shirt and jeans, and she twists around just enough that Brian can see the nametag on her breast, which reads—

“Sandy! Hi, sorry, we got a little caught up at home.” Brian keeps his voice bright, peeking from over Pat’s shoulder, and steps up so they’re even again. “How are you?”

“I’m good, honey, thank you for asking. I’ll swing back and have them start cooking for you, is the usual fine?”

Pat clears his throat. “Yeah. That would be good.”

They end up leading themselves to a booth by a big window, seats sticky vinyl, table so reflective Brian can practically see their reflections in it.

The conversation starts slow, but some coffee and burgers perk them up, and soon they’re speculating wildly over the legend behind the missing truck.

“It’s kids looking for it, right?” asks Pat. “Maybe it holds the secret to...I don’t know, fucking for hours without chafing.”

Brian almost spits out his drink. “Patrick!” he admonishes, and can’t stop the delight from bleeding into his voice. “Every time I think I have you figured out, honestly.”

Pat levels him with a look. “If that’s surprising to you, then you must not know me all that well.”

Brian shoots him a look right back, though he’s smiling a little. “I didn’t mean _that_ , you’re just— you catch me off guard. You’re so quick.”

“Says you.” It’s teasing.

Something about it, though… “Stop deflecting,” says Brian, more serious now, and Pat’s little smirk fades. “You’re so bad at taking compliments. Come on, I apparently liked you enough to marry you, is it so far-fetched that I think you’re the fucking best?”

“Brian.”

“No, I mean it. I still don’t think we’re gonna get home without learning something, and I’m starting to think that something is that you don’t realize you’re great. At all.”

“Can we not—”

“Do you even like yourself?” pushes Brian. It feels good to let this righteousness burn hot, to focus on getting through Pat’s thick, stubborn skull. Anything to duck out from under the blanket of sadness threatening to smother them both. “For real, Pat. Do you?”

Pat is starting to look the tiniest bit desperate, expression cracking. “Bri—”

“Would you just—”

“Sweetheart, _please_.” As soon as he says it, Pat’s eyes go wide, and he flushes bright red.

Brian stutters over his retort. He’d been gearing up to keep fighting, to ratchet up the heat until— until—

Sandy walks over with their check in hand, either oblivious to what just happened between them or pretending to be, and smiles warmly. “Just wanted to pop over and drop this off,” she says, but after she puts the check down she leans a hand on the table and stays. “Brian, how are things at the clinic? Did you work today?”

“Not on Fridays,” he says, this part of him that’s not quite him reacting on instinct. “And it’s, um. It’s good. Rewarding.”

“Good, good. And Patrick, dear, are you still making those videos?”

Patrick’s widen for a moment before he schools himself back to a modicum of steadiness. “Yes,” he says, and, like Brian, seems surprised at his own knowledge.

They’re getting better at this, thinks Brian, though it’s not an exciting prospect. How long has it been? 

Sandy pats Brian on the shoulder, pausing to squeeze for a moment, and then she departs. Brian feels, not for the first time today, the overwhelming urge to cry. 

A pause. There’s so much silence between he and Pat sitting at this table.

Eventually, Pat pulls out his wallet and tucks his card next to the receipt. Brian’s halfway through following suit when Pat huffs what could be a laugh. “Married people don’t usually split checks,” he says. His voice sounds hoarse. His cheeks are still pink, would probably be hot to the touch if Brian reached out.

“Right,” murmurs Brian, wrong-footed, and folds his hands carefully on the table.

Eventually, the check is paid, and then the two of them are on their way after a goodbye to Sandy and a promise to come back later that week. Usually, Brian feels guilty about making promises if he doesn’t know they’ll be kept once the Brian of this world gets back into his body, but in this moment he can’t bring himself to feel much of anything. Pat seems to feel the same way, and they get over halfway home before either of them says a word.

“So a clinic,” says Pat finally. His cheeks aren't red anymore. “You’re a doctor?”

“No,” answers Brian. “No, nothing like that. It’s, um. It’s kids, I think. Early intervention for mental health stuff. I’m pretty sure I’m just like, an outreach coordinator or something. Maybe organizing volunteers? Something non-profit-y.”

Pat’s expression softens. “You’re good at that, I bet.”

“Thanks.”

They keep walking. It’s still light out, but the clouds have gotten darker, threatening to mist the air with rain.

Brian tries to swallow down his sadness, but his voice is thick when he continues speaking. “I didn’t know what else to do. After...after what happened. We left and we got married and I didn’t know what to fucking do with myself.” A tear tracks hot down his cheek. “God, sorry.”

Pat wraps an arm around Brian’s shoulder, and Brian leans miserably into him. “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he murmurs, and Brian could swear he cuts himself off from adding another endearment to the end of that sentence. 

“I’m still sorry.”

All around them, nature rustles. The water, not too far off, fills the air with the hum of white noise, and the trees around them kick their leaves together in the breeze. It’s pale, washed out, beautiful. He and Pat could be the only people in the world for how Brian feels in that moment.

Pat hums and tugs him closer, and they slow down as they walk, keep bumping into each other. Brian doesn’t mind.

“I thought you’d be upset with me,” Brian says.

“For what?”

Brian shrugs one shoulder, hopes Pat feels it and understands. “I got pushy back there. I don’t know, it was intense.”

“It’s fine. I know I can be a stubborn asshole.”

“I crossed a line.”

In any other situation, Pat’s voice would be sharp when he replies, but instead, he says, “I’m not mad that you care about me, babe,” with such fondness that the Pat and Brian of this world _must_ have had this conversation before.

Pat stiffens a little when he hears himself, and Brian, despite the fucking knife in his chest, presses forward before he can get self-conscious about it. It’s not like Pat meant to say that, and drawing attention to it will just make things awkward. Brian can’t spend the rest of today not talking to Pat. Not touching him. “I guess that’s fair.”

“I think I’m just gonna watch TV back at the cabin for the rest of the evening. You can join if you want. I’m too tired to write or edit or anything for tonight. Pat of this life can deal with it.”

“Yeah,” says Brian as they approach the house, still tucked into Pat’s side, still aching. “That sounds nice.”

/

Later that night, Brian finds the pamphlet in a messenger bag at the side of the bed while Pat is brushing his teeth. _Are you considering suicide? Help is available!_ On the cover, a young girl—god, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old—smiles in a sunny field. She’s holding a bouquet of flowers. She looks happy.

Brian swipes frustratedly at his face, fingers coming away damp.

When Pat walks in, his face crumples in concern, but Brian waves him off. “My body is trying to remind me what happened before we came here,” he says. “Or my brain is. Whatever part of me that’s not— my consciousness, my soul, whatever. The part of this me that usually lives in Maine. It wants me to remember.”

“And?”

“And that is the _last_ thing I want.”

Pat comes to sit on the bed next to him. “You’re not curious?”

“Polyon folded last year,” says Brian, too fast, nerves buzzing. “I don’t know how I know that. But I do. It was kind of sudden, I think, and then we got married, and now we’re here. And I got restless because I was messed up over what happened in New York, so I got a job at a suicide prevention non-profit. Because of my guilt. Something-- it was really bad, I think it was-- please, Pat, I don’t want to think about this anymore.”

After that, Pat looks about as winded as Brian feels. “Okay,” he says softly, a concession. “It’s okay, we don’t have to pick at it anymore.

“Can we just go to sleep?” Brian knows his own voice sounds tiny. He can’t find the part of him that lights up, that loves the spotlight. He’s just small, tired.

“Of course,” says Pat. “Yeah, Bri, of course we can.”

Brian falls asleep with his head on Pat’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, and tucks this memory away in the box where his longing goes.

/ 

Brian wakes up in a crouch. He blinks, a pocket of darkness around his head, and jerks his head up only to bang it against the underside of his desk. It feels familiar, to this body and to whatever his home body is now. Polygon newsroom. He can work with that.

“You find the last of the adaptors?” someone who sounds like Clayton calls, and when Brian looks up, Clayton’s hands are in his pockets. He’s avoiding Brian’s gaze, slouched over, and something must be really, really wrong. 

On his desk is a box full of trinkets, photo frames, extra trail mix packs – everything that was on his desk, actually. The speckled surface and weird fabric walls of his cubicle are barren. 

In Brian’s hand is and HDMI to USB-C adaptor. He crawls out from the darkness and stands. “Yeah,” he says, then clears his throat. “Yeah, I did.”

Clayton nods, nods again. “Good. I think Tara wanted to see you in her office.”

“All right,” says Brian. He puts down the adaptor and starts walking toward Tara’s door, and his steps feel wooden. The crush of sadness from yesterday is blessedly absent, but there’s some other emotion bubbling up in Brian, a bittersweetness, a melancholy.

Tara waves him in right away, typing a few last things on her computer before turning towards him completely. Her smile is genuine, no snark to it, and that’s how Brian knows that this isn’t a joke. “How’re you holding up?” she asks him.

“Well,” says Brian, “I haven’t had my coffee yet, but otherwise I’m okay.”

Tara laughs. “Fair enough. I just wanted to run through a couple of reminders for you before lunch. Your article comes out today, and you’re welcome to tweet about it once it’s live. Clayton helped you pack up, I assume?” She waits for Brian’s nod before continuing. “Great. And everyone’s off early today to get drinks. Celebrate, whatever.”

“I’m touched,” says Brian, and it starts as a joke but comes out all too sincere.

Tara grimaces, her natural reaction to genuine sentiment. “We’re happy for you, kid. Now go finish getting your stuff together.”

Brian doesn’t say that he’s pretty sure his stuff is already together, choosing instead to thank her and get out of her office. If there’s any room you don’t want to overstay your welcome in, it’s that one, though Brian realizes he probably isn’t going to need that knowledge in this life for very much longer.

He’s leaving Polygon. It’s his last day. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or why, but he’s getting out of here.

And, he realizes, he hasn’t seen Pat anywhere.

The office is weirdly empty today, and Brian spends a moment wondering if he’s not the first of the people he knows to leave. If Pat quit, or if Jenna went back to teaching. If Jeff got a lucrative position doing graphic design like he always wanted and went off to do that instead. He racks his brain and finds nothing, so he moves on from that and starts shifting around his belongings in the box where he packed them up. He spends a good thirty minutes on that before the conference room opens and the rest of the video team pours out of it.

He’s halfway through asking, jokingly, why they didn’t invite him to that meeting when he remembers, and has to save it last minute with an awkward, “Hey, why were all of you in there without— um, sun protection?”

Jenna looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. “Sun protection?”

“It’s bright in there. From all of your potential, obviously.”

Jenna smiles at him, bemused. “Speaking of potential, what time is your flight again?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Your flight,” repeats Jenna.

Brian focuses on talking to her, and not on Pat walking by on the way to his desk. “Let me check,” he says, and pulls out his phone. Lo and behold, right there in his e-wallet, he finds a one way ticket to LAX. “Eight thirty.”

Jenna pats him on the shoulder, a solid point of contact that Brian can’t help but lean into. “Do you have lunch plans?” she asks him.

Brian has no idea. “No,” he says, “but you’re paying.”

/

Lunch is fun. A little baffling at points, since Brian doesn’t really know what this version of himself wants to do with his life—he’d really, really thought that Polygon was _it_. At least for the next few years. But this is a different world, a different experience entirely, and Brian fudges his way through a few questions and sidetracks Jenna in all sorts of ways, starting with her opinions on the direction the horror genre is taking and finishing with a spiel on xylophones that takes so many turns he can barely follow it himself.

By the time they get back to the office, they’re both giggling, and there are only two hours left in the workday before it’s celebratory drink time.

Brian corners Pat at his desk after another meeting starts that leaves them mostly alone. “Hey.”

Pat startles, almost ripping his headphones out, and turns around way too casually to be anything but suspicious. “Hi,” he says brightly. “I have a call, actually, in like five minutes. Do you need something?”

Brian squints at him, a pang of anxiety flooding cold through his body, but Pat’s eyes are clear, present. “Not really,” says Brian. He’d never needed a reason to talk to Pat after all this started. “I’ll, um. Leave you to it.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Brian quickly. “Yeah, of course.”

He makes a quick departure and goes back to fiddling with things on his desk until he gets a text from Tara telling him the article is live.

He tweets right away. Maybe the Brian of this life will add to it later, something sweet, sentimental, but for now he just posts an emoji heart and links to the article, succinctly titled _It’s My Last Day at Polygon_ by Brian David Gilbert.

As likes and replies start pouring in, he turns his phone off, watching the screen go black, and puts it in his pocket. A problem for future Brian, then.

Clayton squeezes his shoulder when he walks by Brian’s desk, and Brian takes a deep, steadying breath. _I’m gonna miss you,_ he doesn’t say.

It’ll just make things harder.

/

Brian’s waiting in line for the bathroom at the bar, obscured by the man behind him (who is much taller and broader than Brian, though that’s not saying all that much), when he hears an urgent, hushed conversation by the bar just a few feet away.

“I thought you were going to do it today.” That’s Simone, as quiet as she ever is—which is to say that her voice carries well enough to be perfectly clear from a ways away.

“I don’t know.” That’s Pat. Pat was going to do something today? “I guess I was. But it seems shitty.”

Simone sighs heavily. “You told me it would be shittier if you did it over the phone. Seriously, get your act together. He leaves _tonight_.”

“I know. I fucking know, Simone.”

Another sigh. “It sucks. I know. But you can’t yank him around like this. It’s not good for either of you.”

“It’s not about-- ugh, fuck. I need another drink.”

“You’re not even drinking.”

“Another soda. Whatever. Maybe I’m just a piece of shit anyway.”

The door opens in front of Brian, and he walks into the restroom. He isn’t sure what, exactly, he just heard, tries to mull it over while he’s behind a locked door, but he doesn’t get anywhere, and when he goes to wash his hands, they’re shaking.

Back in the bar, Brian walks to the table where everyone is sitting except for Pat. He’s nursing a Sprite at the bar, line of his back tense.

Brian sinks into his chair. He gets dragged back into the spirited conversation after a few minutes, and manages to have fun, but he keeps glancing over at Pat, who hasn’t come back. Simone catches him watching, but doesn’t say anything until Brian checks the time and realizes he actually needs to get going if he wants to make his flight.

The goodbyes are sweet, quick. Friendly and focused on not crying, for the most part. Jenna goes a little teary, so Brian pretends to formally shake her hand as if closing a deal on a particularly old house, and that brings a smile out of her.

And then, as he’s about to leave, Simone says she’ll walk him out and wait for the rideshare to get there.

It’s cool outside, wicked breeze cutting across their faces, and Brian shivers. “I bet it’s warmer in LA,” he mutters mulishly, and then feels like an asshole.

Simone laughs, though. “You’re gonna become such a weather snob. Don’t even argue, you know it’s true.”

“Probably,” concedes Brian.

A moment of quiet. The car that’s going to pick him up is five minutes away. Brian keeps glancing back at the bar. Can’t help being obvious about it.

“Don’t feel bad,” says Simone suddenly, and when her gaze lands on him it’s firm, unwavering. She has a knack for loading words with meaning beyond the surface level. At about that moment, Brian realizes he feels absolutely sick with guilt, and has no idea how much of it he brought over from yesterday’s world, and how much is just this body, and how much is _him_. Really him. “Promise me.”

Brian tugs on the hair at the nape of his neck and shudders against the wind. “I don’t,” he lies.

Like the freaky mind-reader she is, Simone yanks him into an aggressive hug. “You don’t owe us anything but your happiness,” she says fiercely.

Brian nods into her shoulder. “I know,” he says, and this one feels like less of a lie. Like he’s been testing it against his teeth for a while.

The rideshare drives up, Brian checking the license plate, and then a few things happen at once.

First, Brian opens the car door with a friendly hello and verifies the driver’s identity.

Second, Simone hisses, “What the fuck are you doing?” in the direction of the bar.

And third, the back door of the car tugs back open as Pat climbs in next to him.

“Hi,” says Brian. Shit. If he presses for information on why Pat is being so weird, the driver might get suspicious and kick them both out. But acting totally normal doesn’t seem quite fair, either. “You good?”

Pat nods, businesslike, and buckles his seatbelt. “Wanted to see you off.”

“Okay,” murmurs Brian.

Fine, then. God, Brian doesn’t even know why he’s upset, but the combination of being blown off by Pat all day and then overhearing a conversation that unsettled him to his core has manifested as hot coals at the bottom of his stomach, threatening at any moment to burst into flame.

The ride to the airport is short, quiet aside from the myriad honks and yelling that accompany New York streets at any given moment, and Pat follows Brian out of the car, into the building, to the check-in kiosk, and all the way until they’re right outside of security.

“I need to go,” says Brian, finally.

All around them, the airport hums. Parents attempt to hush crying children, couples part with tears in their eyes, a barista butchers the name on a coffee cup. Lights flash, and the scent of rubber and recycled air hangs everywhere. Clings. Brian doesn’t notice any of it, too busy looking at the pained expression on Pat’s face. He seems to be battling with himself, but about what?

Pat starts talking a couple of times before settling on a sentence. “We don’t know if our choices here carry over to tomorrow, after we’re gone.”

“No,” agrees Brian. “I don’t exactly want to risk it, though. I’d throttle myself if a pod Brian entered my body just in time to miss a flight and destroy my career.”

“I didn’t mean— yeah, of course, you should go. That’s not what I meant.”

Brian squints at him, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, before something in him just collapses. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says, exhausted, defeated. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Brian scoffs. “You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

“Yeah, because I’m a piece of shit.”

“Would you stop saying that about yourself? You’re not—”

Brian is cut off first by a pair of hands cupping his cheeks, and second by a mouth on his. Pat’s mouth. Pat is kissing him. Brian stifles the rest of the that sentence, indignant, and brings one hand up to fist in Pat’s jacket a he kisses back.

God, this is so stupid, and Brian can’t bring himself to give a single flying fuck. He pulls back just long enough to take a breath before stealing another kiss, and then another, and then another.

Frankly, considering the fact that Pat’s hands are literally on his face, it takes Brian way too long to realize that the other man is trembling.

Tentatively, Brian pulls back, just far enough to look Pat in the eye. “Are you okay?”

It becomes immediately evident that the answer to that question is _no_. Pat’s eyes are red-rimmed and just shy of watery, and his mouth pulls to one side the way it does when he gets nervous. His jacket is hopelessly rumpled in the front where Brian’s hand had been gripping it, and the entire impression is that of a tree during a hurricane: rattled, disheveled, and barely standing.

“I was going to break up with you,” says Pat.

“Fuck,” Brian blurts out. Having an inkling is one thing, but hearing it confirmed like that, bald and undeniable, has Brian flinching backwards.

“I know.” Pat looks wretched, one hand twisting in his own hair. “I literally had an alarm reminder on my _fucking_ phone, Brian, I didn’t— I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know if this carries. I don’t know if it’s the right call.”

Brian’s pulse thunders in his ears. “I have to go,” he says.

“Brian—”

“I need to go,” he repeats, shaking his head a little. He feels so far away from his body. His lips are still tingling. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” says Pat, but Brian barely hears it, shouldering his backpack more firmly across his back and walking with purpose

If he can just move quickly enough, it’s almost like he can’t hear the sound of his own heart splintering, confused and frustrated and so, so scared, in the very center of his ribcage.

Security is a blur, just like the walk to the gate, just like the waiting in the plastic chairs, just like boarding, just like stowing his bag under the seat in front of him, just like exchanging vague, distant pleasantries with the kindly-looking older lesbian couple sitting next to him.

None of it feels real. Brian still isn’t convinced any of it is.

As the plane begins to take off, he looks out the window.

Below him, New York City’s evening sprawls picturesque, a map of street lights and lines of cars weaving their way in various directions. The higher the altitude, the more of it Brian sees. Somewhere down there is the bar they were just at, and somewhere is the lamp outside of Simone and Jenna’s apartment, and somewhere Tara is cursing traffic as she tries to get to a show for her cousin’s best friend’s band in some tiny dive bar in SoHo. Somewhere, Pat is...still standing in the airport, maybe, or waiting outside to be picked up. Brian wonders if Pat’s eyes are still half-glazed, scared like Brian’s never seen him before. If Pat’s lips are still a little pinker than usual. If his jacket’s mussed.

Up above, the stars look a lot like a city of their own, and promise sweeter things.

Brian rests his head against the cool glass of the window, shuts his eyes, and tries his best to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure when the next chapter will be up! For now I'm going to guess we're about two weeks out. I'll update back here when I have a better idea, or you can follow me on poppyseedheart on twitter (locked but I accept requests!) and pester me about it there, I'm always happy to talk fic <33


	4. complication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” he cries into Pat’s chest, and then continues, because he has nothing left, no more walls to throw up, just the soft material of Pat’s shirt against his hot cheek and his own two feet on the tiled floor, “I love you, I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW, hey everyone! Welcome to chapter 4! Two things—first, this story has (as you have seen) expanded beyond what I thought it would be, and that's been awesome. It's also, obviously, slowed me down. I bring to you a chapter 4 with the caveat that there will be a chapter 5, and it will be the last one. For now, please enjoy these boys and their continued saga of universe-hopping! As you may have noticed by the summary, a few things come to light in this one.
> 
> I also wanted to say a HUGE thank you to all of you who have been commenting, chatting with me on twitter or discord, and just generally supporting this story. Your kindness and patience has made this chapter possible, and will continue to fuel the final one. I cannot say how much it has meant to me to be met with compassion over the last months as I struggled to make these words happen, and I am SO excited to bring them to you all.
> 
> Love, as always, to Scout for the beta.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this <3

He jerks into consciousness with two people he’s never seen in his life hovering in his personal space.

“Uh,” he says, getting the sense that he’d been mid-sentence before he landed here. The two people are both women, one tall with wide eyes and the other broad with a soft smile, and both of them are trying to accomplish something around his head, his face. Makeup, maybe? Hair? Anxiety tries to crawl up his throat, mingling hotly with fresh hurt, but he swallows it down. “Sorry, wow, just got a little light-headed.”

They both laugh a little, and the shorter one tuts when Brian smiles, nudging at his face with a makeup sponge. “It’s fine to be nervous on opening night, but no matter what happens, we’ll make sure you look good.”

“Opening night,” repeats Brian. He’d thought that by now he’d have learned to keep his mouth shut and listen when he lands in a new world, but he’s still rattled from that scene at the airport, and, if he’s not mistaken, this is the dressing room of a theater. A _nice_ theater. A _fancy enough that the cast might be making a liveable wage_ theater. There aren't a lot of those in the world, Brian knows, and the lights and the rug and the thick curtains adorn the room like it’s something special. And if that wasn’t enough of a giveaway, his breath keeps catching in his throat, heart fluttering like it’s trying to slip through his ribs and out of his chest. “Right,” he manages, and closes his eyes when prompted. “Um, sorry.”

There’s some idle chatter after that, the two women talking to each other as they work on him, but Brian lets himself zone out.

He’s exhausted, he realizes. He doesn’t know how much of that was already here and how much he brought with him from the day before, but it doesn’t change the fact that his brain welcomes the chance to curl up for a bit, go quiet. 

It’s only when his shoulder is nudged with a laugh that he opens his eyes again, and sees himself in the mirror in front of him. He’s wearing a white coat, hair styled up into a neat coiff, and a stethoscope hangs loosely around his neck. Doctor, he thinks. Dashing, cute. He can do that. He can do this. Anything in his pockets? Props to be thinking about? What kind of shirt is he wearing underneath—

There’s no time to inspect himself further, though, because the door to his dressing room swings open and a harried-looking young man practically drags Brian out of his chair. “Full house,” says the...well, kid, really—Brian’s not sure who’s in charge here, but this seems like an intern—as he hustles Brian through a series of narrow hallways. They almost bump into some people on the way, many in full hair and makeup, most who toss smiles and greetings at Brian that he does his best to return.

 _Full house_ , thinks Brian, and that’s the kind of thing people are usually elated about, but all he feels is cold, humming, panicky fear. It starts in his gut and winds its way through his chest, his legs, his arms. Starts his hands shaking as it drips its way into his fingertips and stays there.

He gets passed from person to person, gets asked if he’s ready, says _yes, yes, yes._

Thinks _fuck, fuck, fuck._

He can hear the crowd in the theater and the way they move and shift and rustle as they find their seats, and then he watches from behind the curtain as the thin strip of light peering in from the bottom fades. The lights go down. The crowd hushes.

“Here we go,” says a woman he remembers seeing earlier, clipped in to her own body mic, extravagant mascara framing her bright eyes, apron tied around her waist. She seems shy, nervous to be talking to Brian.

He manages a smile, holds it. “Break a leg.”

And then he’s being nudged into place out of the way of the curtains, and the stage goes quiet before the music starts, slow, plodding, and his co-stars begin to sing.

The show continues in a terrifying blur of action. Some moments hang heavy in the air, Brian watching and trying to take in every single detail, and other moments zip by so quickly that his head starts to spin. He knows the songs, he’s pretty sure. He’s listened to the soundtrack, watched a third of a bootleg once, and lived with theater kids for a couple of years—in short, he’s got this. He’s...definitely got this.

He spares a moment to think, chest clenching, _Wait, where’s Pat?_ before he hears a music cue and then his entire body is urging him to get onstage.

In the last universes, his body gave him what he needed. Carried him through an entire concert, through shadowy trauma, through living on a submarine nearly a mile underwater.

He can do this, too.

Brian steps out onto the stage and smiles a bright, friendly, doctorly smile. The lights blind him a little, and he can feel his heart attempting to make a fucking _break_ for it, but that’s nothing new, is it?

Game face.

Showtime.

/

He _kills it_.

/

Okay, it’s not perfect. Brian is following his instincts, and every time he thinks too hard he can feel his own visceral response to the misstep, the hesitation. When he pulls the actress playing Jenna close at the end of Bad Idea, he remembers that they have to kiss on the last note, and freezes for just long enough that she has to do the yanking all on their own, leaving their bodies pressed together, lips locked, eyes shut, lights bright and then dark, dark, dark.

Brian can taste her waxy lipstick, smell her perfume. Thinks of another kiss, of desperate, devastated hands on his waist, of the tremble in Pat’s shoulders, of Brian’s own heart and how it sunk like a rock right into his stomach, how it’s still there— it’s still _there—_

Someone asks if he’s all right during the intermission and he nods like a bobblehead.

“I’m fine,” he says, then repeats it again, “I’m fine, I promise,” because he is feeling _everything_ and there’s no good way to say it when the low light is shining on him like this, when his hands are trembling, when he’s thinking about someone and it hurts but the hurt doesn’t stop the missing him.

And then it’s the second act, and Brian sings and acts his heart out, projectile-launching it onto the stage, and the rock in his stomach is still there but either it’s lighter or Brian has learned to accommodate its weight, because he feels like he’s floating. Rearranges a line here and there, maybe, and accidentally invents a new melody for the end of a verse at one point, but at the end of the show, when he’s standing under the hot spotlight bowing and laughing and trying not to sweat off his makeup, he looks out at the audience and thinks, maybe for the first time in all of this mess, that he’s done the Brian of this world proud.

/

What Brian should do after the show—he was a theater kid, knows this like the back of his hand—is take off his makeup, shower, change into his street clothes, mingle a bit, go to the stage door to sign some things and take selfies with fans, and then go home and gear up to do it all again tomorrow.

But this Brian, the one who won’t be here tomorrow, is selfish and tired and still just a little heart-sore. “I’m not feeling well,” he tells one of the stage managers, snagging her as she walks by.

Her eyes go serious, concerned, the dark-brown color almost black in the low light. “Do you need anything?” she asks him.

Brian shakes his head, wincing at the way his overly-hairsprayed mop of hair moves unnaturally along with it. “I think I just need to go home. I’m sorry.”

She waves him off with a flutter of acrylic nail-adorned fingers. “Go,” she says. “I’ll let them know.”

“Thank you,” he says, sagging a bit with relief. He wants to go home, an urge he can’t explain or name. Where does he even live? What’s waiting for him there? But it runs under the current of his thoughts, strong and true, and Brian clings to the certainty as the adrenaline in his system begins to wane. 

He scrubs off his makeup haphazardly. He tugs on a pair of worn skinny jeans. He walks out the back of the theater.

And he’s met with a sight that he wasn’t expecting, though maybe he should have been, considering the way the anticipation still tingling in his body settles once his eyes alight on the man standing by the back entrance.

Patrick Gill cuts an arresting figure against the lamplight in this narrow avenue. He’s wearing his nicest button-up shirt and a pair of neatly pressed slacks, shoes shining under the wide moon, and his hair is pushed back in the way he always does it when he’s trying to either impress someone or protect himself. Often, those are two sides of the same coin. Between the passerby and the inconsistent stampede of taxis, Pat seems frozen in the moment. He doesn’t look up until Brian’s right in front of him, either, and even then he doesn’t say anything, just lets his hands clutch tighter around the extravagant bouquet of flowers he’s holding.

“You’re here,” says Brian, voice hoarse from all of the singing and nothing else.

Pat blinks. His eyes roam over Brian’s face, and he finds something that— his eyebrows do this thing, but it’s so quick— his mouth tightens, maybe, but only maybe—

“You’re such a fucking hard read,” complains Brian, startling himself a little with it.

Pat seems startled, too. “Am I?”

Brian frowns at him. “Yes.”

“Oh,” says Pat, very quietly. He rubs at the back of his neck self-consciously, posture opening up a bit. “And here I thought all my cards were already on the table.”

At once, the adrenaline begins to drip its way out of Brian’s body, and he stands, posture sagging, under the streetlamp above them. His sigh is heavy. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. And isn’t that a cherry on top of it all, that Brian’s in the wrong world, the wrong body, reading all the signs wrong without any guidance, and then being told he’s just being— what? Willfully ignorant? He feels useless, has to come out and ask, “What cards, Pat?” and can hear how tired, tired, tired he sounds.

“I— I kissed you yesterday.”

“I remember.”

Brian remembers too well, maybe, the tingle in his lips, how he could feel Pat trembling. How awful it was under the harsh fluorescent lights. How Pat’s voice broke when he said that he didn’t know what to do, or what to want for himself.

“You didn’t say anything.”

“What was I supposed to say to that?”

“Anything,” answers Pat fervently, gesturing with the bouquet, which seems to remind him that he’s been holding it. His cheeks go just the littlest bit pink. It’s fascinating to Brian to see this Pat—stripped down, careless in his expression, like he heard Brian loud and clear when Brian said _please, let me in, you’re too far away and I don’t know how to reach you past all of this distance._ “Sorry,” says Pat, “these are for you. For opening night. Can we— can we start this conversation over?”

Brian takes the flowers delicately, holding them close to his chest. They’re beautiful. He nods.

“Congratulations on opening night. You were amazing,” says Pat. “Seriously. I know it’s _you_ , and not the you of here, but the me of this world knows you worked your tail off for this. And I’m really, really fucking proud of you.”

“Thank you,” whispers Brian. This whiplash is unfair, has something vulnerable blooming in his chest.

He leans his head down, smells the flowers. They’re light, lovely, all of Brian’s favorite colors. Any doubts he had about what they are to each other here are wiped clean when he sees a single red rose tucked right there in the center.

Pat checks his watch, then looks over his shoulder. “It’s late, and you look tired. Do you want to head home?”

“Mine or yours?”

Pat huffs a laugh. “It’s the same apartment. Got there earlier, and my phone was beeping at me telling me I was gonna be late to get flowers before the show if I didn’t haul ass, but there are some pictures of us and stuff around. We share a closet.”

“Like in Maine,” says Brian, before he can stop himself.

“Yeah,” says Pat. His expression is unreadable again. “Like in Maine.”

And Pat is inscrutable, infuriating, makes Brian want to pull his hair out with the way he talks in circles and won’t recognize how great he is. His stupid face holds so many _secrets_ , and Brian wants to yank at the thread of them until they all spill out at Brian’s feet and he can pick them up and look at them, turn them around in his hands, but Pat won’t let him. Because Patrick Gill is stubborn. Awful. Hurts Brian without meaning to.

And Brian is so miserably head over heels in love with him in that it _aches_.

“Okay,” says Brian.

Pat’s brow furrows. “Okay?”

“Okay, Pat Gill. Take me home.”

/

Home is just a few blocks away, an easy walk in this late hour, and Pat and Brian stay close together but not touching. They keep their hands to themselves, Brian’s clutching the bouquet, Pat’s deep in his pockets. A respectful distance maintained, as if breaching it would change something irreversibly. Maybe it would.

Pat leads the way to the building, up two flights of stairs, and into a sweet-looking apartment not too different from Brian’s own that he shares with Laura and Jonah. The difference is that, like Pat said, there are photos on the walls of the entryway that tell a story Brian wasn’t expecting. The both of them in Johns Hopkins sweaters, college-aged, grinning at the camera. Pat holding a degree in Advanced Media Studies, cap skewed messy over his long hair, and Brian at his side gazing up at him adoringly. Brian, at his own graduation, and Pat there, too. God, how long have they been together in this world? There’s one of Brian kissing Pat’s cheek in front of a pizza shop, another of the two of them screaming while taking a selfie on a rollercoaster. Brian can’t help but marvel at them, reaching out and tracing the frame of the one closest to the end of the hallway where they’re laughing on a beach, seemingly unaware of the camera, Brian tucked into Pat’s side like he belongs there, the both of them in soft sweaters by the bonfire.

 _Oh_ , thinks Brian, because it’s not really like looking at strangers at all.

“Yeah,” murmurs Pat quietly behind him, looking at Brian’s looking. “Kind of a different story, huh?”

“Really different. Here we’ve been together...what, seven years?”

Pat hums his agreement. “I don’t remember any of it, obviously, since it wasn’t me, but I remember the feeling. Of being proud of you, I mean. Or, like, believing in you. I always did, even from the very start.”

“Jesus, Pat, do you want me to cry tonight? Is that what you’re angling for?”

Pat chuckles. “No, no. I’m just—” he sighs, huffing a breath, and sobers a bit. Toes his shoes off, hangs his coat by the door. “I feel like I keep putting my foot in my mouth. I just want you to know what I’m thinking. I’ve been bad about it. That’s all.”

“I still don’t really know what you’re thinking, honestly,” Brian says as he walks into the kitchen, keeping his tone airy so as not to make Pat feel too guilty about it. It’s a delicate balance. Every version of Brian knows that, he’s come to realize. Knows how Pat works, and how to navigate his moods, even if Brian doesn’t always stick the landing.

The kitchen is dim, the only sound the low buzz of the appliances. Brian, barefoot in sweatpants and a hoodie, feels comfortable here in this home they’ve apparently built together. He’s tired enough that he doesn’t worry about letting his instincts carry him through the motions, pouring a couple of glasses of water first and then setting the kettle to boil.

Pat follows him in, looking nervous, tentative. “Brian, I…” he trails off, can’t seem to finish his sentence.

Brian drinks half of his glass of water in one go and swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Catches water, sees it shine. “Can I ask you a question?”

A nod. Pat is leaning against the far wall, and Brian is leaning back against the counter. “Of course,” says Pat, belated, unnecessary.

It should be scarier, Brian thinks, to ask this, but the warm overhead light and knick knacks on the counter make him brave. “Why did you kiss me yesterday?”

Pat’s mouth twists. “It was selfish. I knew— I realized, I mean...for that Pat, it would be the last chance. Probably ever.” His voice drops here, eyes cast down to the floor. “And I wanted to. The timing was just really, really bad.”

“I wasn’t even sure it was you,” says Brian.

“What?”

“The whole day, you were ignoring me, and I thought maybe I’d, um. Jumped alone. That I left you behind by accident. I was scared, and you weren’t talking to me, and I kept overhearing you say all of these really ominous things to Simone, and I thought— fuck, I don’t know what I thought. And then you kissed me, and _then_ you said you were going to break up with me, and my brain just couldn’t process all of that at once.”

“Fuck,” says Pat shakily.

Brian laughs, but it’s mirthless, slippery, drops away after a fraction of a moment. “I was so scared,” he repeats. It comes out thready and raw, like the scratch of an ill-executed decrescendo, like the verge of surrender to something Brian can’t see coming.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I just needed to know why. That’s it, I swear.” When Pat doesn’t answer right away, Brian continues, something in him lighting up frantic, trying to fix whatever broke between them the day before. Whatever, maybe, is still breaking. “You told me,” he says, “in bed, after the book signing, that I try to make sense of things through story. And you were right. I need there to be a reason for this, Pat, because if there’s not—” Brian cuts himself off only because he realizes he’s about ten seconds from bursting into tears.

If there’s not a reason, then it only hurts. Then Brian’s swollen heart keeps battering against his ribs, his hands keep shaking, his thoughts run ragged through his head, and it’s for nothing. No big, shiny resolution. No movie-perfect moment. No sigh of relief at the end where everything fits together just the way it was always supposed to.

Nothing at all.

Brian crumples.

“Hey,” says Pat, and immediately everything about him goes soft, pliant. “Hey, c’mere,” but he’s already walking to Brian, meeting him exactly where he is. When he wraps his arms around Brian, tight and comforting, Brian melts into the embrace like it’s something he’s always known he needed. “C’mere, c’mere, you’re all right.”

And god, if the way they fit together doesn’t make Brian want to fall apart.

“I’m sorry,” he cries into Pat’s chest, and then continues, because he has nothing left, no more walls to throw up, just the soft material of Pat’s shirt against his hot cheek and his own two feet on the tiled floor, “I love you, I’m so sorry.”

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to,” continues Brian miserably. His heart rate picks up, thrumming too-hot-too-fast. His hands fist in Pat’s shirt. He doesn’t know how to unclutch himself from this.

Patrick, for his part, doesn’t push Brian away. Doesn’t say anything at all, for a moment. Just holds Brian, one hand rubbing circles between Brian’s shoulder blades the same way he did all that time ago when Brian was having a panic attack on a couch at the absolute impossibility of their situation.

It’s still impossible, still panic-inducing, but it hits differently in Pat’s arms. Brian is scared of different things now.

After what feels like an eternity, Pat speaks, and his voice rumbles low through Brian’s chest where they’re still partially wrapped up in each other. “Don’t apologize, Bri. Please.” Another long pause, and then Pat tries again. “Remember the first day of all this?”

“Hm?” asks Brian, a little teary but determined to hide it, even if it’s pointless.

“You were at your parents’ house.”

“Oh.”

Pat nods, hair tickling Brian’s temple. He hasn’t let go, and it’s a little awkward, standing there in Brian’s kitchen and talking while hugging, but it’s better than the alternative where they have to do this standing apart with a room and all of this charged emotion between them. “We were both so sad,” continues Pat. His feet shift, right ankle bumping gently into Brian’s. “What do you think happened?”

“We broke up,” says Brian thickly. “You broke up with me.”

A moment. Pat’s warmth, Brian’s tight anxiety fluttering like a thing with wings.

“No, I don’t think that’s exactly right.”

“But it must have been you. I wouldn't break up with you.”

At that, Pat finally pulls back, just enough to look Brian in the eye. Brian’s taken aback to see that Pat’s face is tense, nervous, his eyes rimmed red though no tears have spilled. “Let me talk for a minute, okay?”

Brian nods wordlessly.

Under the low hum of the lights, Pat takes a steadying breath. “I thought that first day was a dream, honestly. It took me a while to even begin to put the pieces together, and I even had Simone there with me. The muscle memory stuff? I didn’t even realize it had anything to do with where we were. I didn’t know Pat of that day had just had his world fucking shattered. I just thought I missed you. That’s— fuck, I didn’t know any better, that’s just how it feels when I miss you.” 

Brian remembers that day, how his heart felt like it was being shoved through a trash compactor, and the vague, awful melancholy that accompanied every breath. How his mom had patted his shoulder like she was trying to stop Brian from falling apart, how it felt like maybe he would either way.

It was the same feeling Brian so desperately tried to avoid on the day Pat left him alone and sans-glasses in the pouring rain. The wretchedness. The missing him.

The feeling on the plane as Brian watched the city disappear out from beneath his feet and turned into a balloon with the string cut. Floating up and away. Going nowhere and everywhere. Anchorless.

“I don’t think we broke up for a reason we could help. I think there was something else going on, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault. I didn’t feel mad, and I didn’t feel guilty. It just hurt. I just missed you.”

“Oh,” whispers Brian. 

“Yeah,” answers Pat, a little bit helpless. “I kissed you because I always want to kiss you. Now, and before, too. I’m sorry I didn’t just say that.”

“Would you?”

Pat’s brow furrows. They’re still standing so close together. “Would I say that?”

“Would you kiss me?”

A moment of perfect stillness. Brian’s heart thumping in his chest, and Pat’s wide, dark eyes on his.

Pat does as he asks.

His big hands abandon their position on Brian’s waist to frame his face, fingertips tapping against Brian’s temples so gently before Pat leans in and, butterfly-soft, connects their lips. Brian can hardly breathe. Brian is going to die here, maybe, melting under Pat’s careful attention, his earnestness. He touches Brian like he thinks Brian is going to break. Brian is trying to both maintain his composure and accept the gentleness of the touch, and is having a hard time managing the two simultaneously.

After the most sunlight-caught-in-raindrops, all-of-his-breath-turning-to-windsong, flush-high-on-his-cheekbones moment of Brian’s life, Pat pulls back, and his gaze is focused, intent.

“Pat?” asks Brian, a little shakily, and isn’t sure what he’s asking for.

But this time, Pat knows. “I’m so fucking in love with you. I’ve loved you for so long I forgot what it feels like to _not_ love you. In every single world, it’s— Trust me, I wouldn't fuck with you like this. I know I’ve been a piece of shit, I’ve been so awful to you, but I’m—”

“Pat,” says Brian again, this time insistent. “Stop for a second.”

Pat closes his mouth.

Brian smiles at him, quick. “You’re so dumb.”

“I know.”

“We’re both so _dumb_.”

A little laugh from Pat, airy and relieved. “I know! Fuck, I know.”

“I love you,” says Brian in a daze. He can’t get this ridiculous grin off his face.

“I love you, too,” answers Pat, like it’s that easy, and god… what if it is?

Brian kisses him again, just to see, and this time it’s less delicate. Nothing’s going to shatter. Brian feels warmth pour through his body like golden light, and in that moment he is so many people. A popstar, a journalist, a video producer with a favorite author, a scared kid with a lump in his chest, an enabler, a supportive friend, a ball of misery, a sweetheart, an actor. All of those things and none of them, and not always in the same order. 

And now, in this very instant, Brian feels _held_ , like that voice in his head that once called Pat home wasn’t ever wrong. Brian just hadn’t been ready to hear it then. But even if all of those Brians had loved Pat with their whole damn heart, Brian can’t help but think it doesn’t hold a candle to the way he feels now.

He winds a hand under the hem of Pat’s shirt just to touch the warm skin there, and smiles up brightly at Pat. “Holy shit,” he practically _chirps_. He’s giddy. “Pat Gill, please tell me I’m not hallucinating this.”

“Either we’re both hallucinating or neither of us is.”

“You know what, that’s good enough for me. Gosh, I love this world. This is the best one. I’m a Broadway baby and we have a cute apartment and everything. Can we stay here? I bet we could rig something up, right? Some kind of— I don’t know, time machine or something.”

“Broadway baby,” repeats Pat, smiling like he’ll never stop. “Time machine? You’re something else.”

“You’ve told me that.”

Pat nods. “And I’ll tell you again, I bet.”

Brian runs a thumb along the collar of Pat’s shirt. “Yeah, you probably will.”

Pat pets his hair and Brian shuts his eyes, bone-deep certain that this is it. The mystery solved, the questions answered. There’s nothing left for them to do here.

Time to go home.

/

The universe does not turn itself inside out. Brian doesn’t sneeze back into his apartment at home, and his skin doesn’t prickle with the absolute magic of possibility.

 _Please_ , thinks Brian, like a song, like a prayer, _please, please, please—_

/

Brian opens his eyes and he’s still in Pat’s arms in the kitchen of the very same apartment they’ve been in for nearly an hour now. The kettle starts to whine, and Brian winces against the sound. 

It grates at him. All of this grates at him. If he’s not annoyed, he’ll break down into panic, so he scowls against the cheery decor and Pat’s sweet fucking face.

“You okay?” asks Pat, noticing a shift.

“I don’t get it.”

Pat pulls back, finally, and Brian pretends not to feel a little cold as they part. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t understand,” snaps Brian, sharper than he intends. He can’t help it with the way his insides feel coiled up like springs. “We figured it out, didn’t we? We did everything we were supposed to.”

“Brian—”

“Don’t, just— you can laugh at me later. Ha, ha, Brian the idealist, right? Head in the clouds, totally naive and so _impractical—_ ”

“Whoa,” says Pat quickly, and it’s the neutral surprise in his tone that douses the fire in Brian’s chest more than anything else. “I wasn’t gonna say that. And who knows, maybe we’ll sleep and then wake up back home. Maybe you were right about all this.”

Objectively, Brian knows he's not being condescended to. Pat is just being careful of his feelings, and it should make Brian light up. Should convince him he’s safe to feel whatever it is that he's feeling in this kitchen. But all Brian feels is far, far from home, young and stupid and hopeful when he shouldn't have been. This, the kissing, the love, it’s a good thing. It's supposed to send them home. It's supposed to be the answer.

Stubbornly, he blinks tears out of his eyes. "You're right. Sorry, no, you're right. I shouldn't make assumptions like that."

Pat sighs exasperatedly. "I'm not sitting here calling you a moron, Brian. Can you at least try to— this thing between us has been a thing for me for a really long time. I want to enjoy it. It doesn't matter where we are."

It doesn't matter, thinks Brian. Lets it echo in his brain. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

"Right. Sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"Okay."

Another sigh, this one gentler. "Sweetheart," says Pat, like he means it, like he’s been wanting to.

And fuck if Brian doesn't go soft for that. It was overwhelming enough the first time when it was a slip of the tongue. Intentional is better, though. It's so much better.

"Okay," he says again. He takes the kettle off of the heat and pours two cups of tea, lets his body decide what Pat wants. He's usually a coffee drinker, but Brian's hands find a lemon and rose-hips blend easily, and choose it for them both. Something herbal so they won't stay up too late. Something floral to match the heartsong that runs, however tempered, through Brian's entire body. Something citrus to match the bright taste of new beginning. It steeps, and the kitchen goes quiet again before Brian breaks the silence. "I feel like I'm being weird. I don't really know how to act right now."

Pat laughs, and the rest of the tension in Brian's body drains right out of him. "I know, right? Not like we have a template or anything. It would be nice if there was a how-to manual or something."

"What to do when you're in love but it's the wrong world."

"What to do when you've just gotten together with your boyfriend of seven years."

Brian snorts. "What to do when you have everything you've ever wanted and you don't think you'll get to keep it."

"You can keep some of it," says Pat, fumbling like he thinks he's not good at pep talks. (That's a lie, by the way. Pat issues moral support like a challenge, keeps Brian on his toes. Circles up a group and gets right down to fucking business. Is exactly what people need him to be, most of the time, and does his best to make up for it when he’s not.) "You don't have to be less happy somewhere else."

Unbidden, Brian thinks of clutching hands and laughing in the rain as they ran, and ran, and ran. "Maybe," he says noncommittally. "Sucks, though, doesn't it? Worst superpower ever."

"Oh, so we're superheroes now? Kind of a demotion from gods."

"You didn't want to be a god," Brian reminds him.

Pat puts his hands up in surrender and grins.

The evening goes on in much the same way. They drink their tea and talk about the places they've been in a roundabout kind of way, like two writers discussing ideas for an upcoming video. Keeping it abstract is the only way Brian thinks he'll be able to stay sane right now. The tea warms him, slows down the occasional trembling, and eventually they drain their mugs and start getting ready for bed.

Brian, much to his chagrin, finds several traces of makeup in nooks and crannies of his face he'd initially missed when washing up at the theater, and takes a long, hot shower, inhaling the steam in hopes of easing the burden on his vocal chords after such a long night of singing and yelling and talking and confessing his feelings.

After forty-five minutes or so, the two of them are in pajamas in bed.

Brian curls up against Pat much like he has in several of the other worlds they've been to. His head rests easily on the flat plane of Pat's chest, and their sides press together, making room for each other and cuddling into the space. Pat is playing with Brian's left hand, absentmindedly tugging on each finger and then tracing the lines of his palm: life line, soul line—

—heart line. Brian shivers. "What if we keep jumping?" he whispers into the darkness.

"Then we keep jumping," answers Pat.

"You're so calm about this."

"You've said that."

Brian tucks his socked foot in between Pat's. "I know. I still don't get it."

"It's because it's you, Bri. There's no one else I'd rather be with, plain and simple. Yeah, I'm freaking the fuck out, but all this has taught us so far is that it can't be that bad. If we're together, it can't be. That's— that's all that fucking matters." He laughs awkwardly. "God, I sound like a cheesy romance novel, don't I?"

"A little," says Brian. Summons his courage, keeps talking. "I like it, though."

Pat hums gently. "We're gonna be fine."

Brian's eyes droop to match Pat's sleepy tone, and a glimmer of hope unfurls in his chest. "Promise?"

In the dreamy space between Pat's body and the duvet, Brian thinks he can feel the entire universe swelling in his ribcage. It's beautiful; it's exhausting; it's overwhelming. It lures him somewhere else. He doesn't manage to stay awake to hear Pat's answer, but he thinks he knows, anyway. 

/

Brian wakes up on a stunning white-sand beach in a comfy chaise with the sound of the ocean crashing in his ears and cannot help his dry sob.

“Urgh,” groans Pat. It seems that in this world he had been napping, and their arrival has upended the peace of sleep. “Fuck.”

Brian buries is face in his hands and tries not to cry.

It takes Pat thirty minutes to coax Brian up and off of the lounger, and that’s really only because it seems to take Pat himself about thirty minutes to stop also radiating panic. His voice is low and even, but he can’t trick Brian, even if he won’t stop trying to for Brian’s sake. Brian sees the shake of his hands, the painfully tight line of his shoulders. “Bri, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

“We’re not even in New York,” says Brian, looking back down at his hands in his lap. He feels like a child. Pitiful, homesick. “This could be anywhere. God. What do we do?”

He’d been expecting an answer, when he asked that. Something along the lines of _we’ll figure it out_ or _I have a feeling this is the last one_ or _there’s nothing we can’t beat together_ or— or—

—anything but the silence that follows. It makes his insides twist over themselves, knotting up until he feels sick with it. He didn’t realize how badly he’d been relying on Pat’s steadying reassurances this whole time until he’s met with their absence.

“I think,” says Pat croakily after a moment, “that this is just fucked. We’re both freaking out. Neither of us is the calm one. Sorry, fuck. I don’t know what we do now. I have no fucking idea.”

“Oh,” says Brian.

He can’t tell if the rushing in his ears is his own blood or the sound of the ocean’s waves. Maybe both. Maybe neither. As the cool breeze wicks sweat from his skin, Brian is acutely aware of the fairness of his chest, his shoulders, the bridge of his nose, can practically feel the sunburn painting its way across his front. 

He reaches into the pocket of his board shorts and is met with a flat plastic card. Clears his throat. “We have a hotel room. Maybe we should, um, convene there.”

“Convene,” echoes Pat, less despondent than before.

“Rendezvous,” Brian replies.

A snort, this time. “Rally.”

“Congregate.”

“Muster?”

Brian squints, tilts his head. “I’ll allow it.”

“Huddle,” continues Pat, “circle up.”

“Okay, okay, you win. Though I’m not really sure about huddle. I don’t think you can huddle with just two people.”

Pat still looks a little seasick, but it’s not like Brian looks any fucking better himself, and that knowledge is all the push he needs to buck up and vacate their little corner of nightmare paradise.

The hotel is beautiful, boasting an expansive lobby, several pools visible from the entrance, and an open bar on the first floor. Brian notes that last one for later, because there’s every chance that after this conversation he’s going to want to drown his entire brain in tequila, Brian of this world’s future hangover be damned. They’re in Hawaii, Brian learns. And there’s no proof of it yet, but it feels like a honeymoon.

The celebration after the main event. The rest after the rush.

Funny, how things work out.

When they get to their room, he collapses face first onto the King-sized bed, white duvet over a soft mattress cradling him close, and groans. “Leave me here to die.”

Pat sits on the edge of the bed and runs his hand over Brian’s back. Brian resists the urge to purr. “It’s not the worst place to give up all hope, I guess.”

“We got married again,” mumbles Brian into the comforter.

A hum. The stroking continues, and Brian presses up into it. “It happens, I guess.”

Brian doesn’t mean to say this out loud, but the edge of anxiety about spilling his feelings everywhere is blunted now: “I think I love you everywhere. In all of the universes, even the stupid ones.” 

Pat snorts at that. Makes it feel easy. Brian’s deepest, darkest secret revealed, just like that, now and the night before, and Pat knows. He won’t un-know it. Brian can’t find it in himself to dredge up fear about it; he used up all his panicked energy at the beach, and now he’s drained.

Pat doesn’t stop touching him, and the contact feels like benediction: _Same here_ , _you’re not alone in this, we are hurtling through lifetimes together._

As comforting as it is, Brian heaves himself up on the bed until he’s sitting, legs dangling over the edge, heels nudging against the mattress. “We should strategize,” he says, because he doesn’t want to say _we need to talk_.

Pat, at least, looks a little sorry before he replies, “What’s gonna change if we do?”

“I don’t want to do this forever.”

“Well, me neither, but...I don’t know, Brian. Do you have any ideas here?”

The thing is, Brian has lots of ideas. Tons of them. Ideas for days, even. They could try to sync up their sleeping patterns and fall unconscious at the same time. They could start talking to other people more and see what their experiences are, because maybe it’s _not_ just Pat and Brian stuck in this limbo. They could ask a psychic, or find a practicing witch. They could go hunting for clues and see if there’s some secret theme that’s been connecting all of these places beyond just the feeling that sparks in Brian’s chest when he sees Pat, which has been the same, which will keep being the same, which could mean everything or nothing at all. They could light a hundred candles and blow them out one by one and make dozens upon dozens of wishes. 

But the pull in Brian’s chest that’s desperate for home is just another piece in a damning body of proof, isn’t it? When you really look at it? 

You don’t get to have anything you want just by virtue of wanting it badly enough. Brian thinks that he really should have learned this lesson by now.

He swallows, tastes bitterness on his tongue. “No,” he says quietly. “No, I don’t.”

“Okay,” answers Pat. He presses a delicate kiss behind Brian’s ear, and Brian goes boneless in his arms.

“Can we go to sleep?”

It’s maybe three or four in the afternoon by the way the sun slants mercilessly through the window. “You don’t wanna make a plan?” He sounds surprised even though Brian had agreed with him just moments before. It’s funny, a little, how well he knows Brian’s stubbornness. Or it would be funny if every part of Brian didn’t long for an easy fix that he’s scared they’ll never find.

“Tomorrow,” mumbles Brian.

“You sure?”

Brian hums. Means to say something else or set an alarm, but what’s it matter? What’s the point? He’s so in love his head is spinning, and he’s so scared his stomach is in knots, and nothing about that is going to change no matter where they end up tomorrow.

“Okay,” says Pat, sounding nervous.

It takes Brian a very long time to fall asleep after that, but he manages it. It doesn’t matter how hard it is. It only matters that they don’t ever get to stay.

/

“Stay down! Brian, listen, stay down for me.”

Pat’s voice is urgent in his ear, and Brian gathers awareness of the situation in slow snatches. Pat’s body draped over his, Brian’s knees on the asphalt, his hands rubbed raw from where they must have caught his fall, the tear in his shirt, the blood dripping from his left ear. “Okay,” he manages, and hears his own voice wobble with adrenaline. 

“You’re fine,” says Pat, low and calming. Normally, Brian would bristle at being spoken to like a spooked animal, but he can’t blame himself for clinging to the comfort when he’s hurt and he doesn’t know why.

Speaking of being hurt— “Are you okay?” he asks urgently. “Pat?”

“I’m okay. I just need you to not move until I figure out what the hell is going on.”

Above their heads, Brian hears the sound of gunfire, smells what must be the burning powder lingering in the air. Everything is too hot—the asphalt, Pat’s body, Brian’s heart in his chest. Brian wants to buck Pat off and figure out what the hell is going on, or start running, or hide better, but his body is telling him _Stay, Pat will take care of you_ , and so Brian doesn’t do any of that. He waits. He stays.

Eventually, Pat grabs his hand, tugs him up, and shuffles him into the backseat of a massive black SUV. Brian lets himself be shuffled, the cool leather against his body a welcome respite. His slacks (nice ones, too) are torn up at the knee, but he otherwise is perfectly intact.

“You okay?” Pat asks.

Brian takes stock one last time, finds nothing too alarming to report. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” Pat leans over the half-up divider to say something to the driver, then leans back again. “Jesus, big change from Hawaii, huh?”

Brian manages a shaky laugh. “No kidding. The hell was that? The hell are _we_?”

“Pretty sure I’m your bodyguard. Not sure who you are, or why people are trying to shoot at you.”

“God,” says Brian, ramped up with adrenaline, and then he surges forward and kisses Pat just because he can.

Pat makes a muffled sound against him, but grabs Brian’s hair to keep him there when Brian tries to pull back. “S’fine,” Pat mumbles between kisses, “we’re okay, you’re perfect,” like he can’t help it, like it’s bubbling right out of him.

With a humming sound, the divider slides the rest of the way up. Brian barely hears it.

They end up at what the driver ominously calls a “safe location” thirty minutes later. Brian’s lips are sore and kiss-swollen, and Pat’s hair is currently in a pretty hopeless state. _Oops_ , thinks Brian, with very little remorse.

“Am I a mafia kingpin or something?” he whispers to Pat as they’re walking up the stairs. “It lines up with the safehouse, but I also absolutely hate it. Who would allow me to do that? Or hell, maybe I’m a drug dealer? I bet I’m so bad at it, Patrick! I get anxious going through security at the airport even when I _don’t_ have anything metal on my person. I worry they’ll find a gun someone planted on me or something. How do I deal drugs or— or _kill people who are disloyal to me?_ Pat Gill, are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” he says. And then, after a pause. “You’re not a mob boss.”

“But how do you _know?_ ”

Pat is smiling as he pulls a key from his pocket and opens the door to the unassuming apartment. “Well I’m not scared of you, for one. My current instinct is to wrap you in a blanket and cook you dinner.”

“You could be dating a kingpin and still feel those things!”

“Nah,” says Pat. 

Brian huffs. They get inside, Patrick meticulously turning three locks on the door behind them, and Brian flops onto the couch with a big, world-weary sigh. “Well, I guess I don’t have to wonder what it would be like to be shot at anymore.”

Pat laughs. “Is that something you wonder about a lot?”

“Wondered. Past tense.”

Pat sits next to him, lets Brian rest his head against the meat of his thigh. “So what’s the verdict?”

“Bad,” says Brian flatly. “Two out of ten, would not recommend.”

“Two?”

“One for the drama, because—” Brian finishes that thought with a little flair of his hand. “And two for the romance. Making out in the car after? With my _bodyguard_? Very nice.”

“Very nice,” echoes Pat, still with traces of laughter in his voice. Brian can’t see anymore, since his eyes drifted shut about three seconds ago when Pat started petting his hair, but he can guess at the sparkle in Pat’s eyes, the way his laugh lines deepen whenever he sounds like this. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think is routine for you in this world, either. More probable, maybe, but that didn’t feel normal.”

Brian scrunches his nose. “No, definitely not normal.” His body is still struggling to come down from the adrenaline high, chest jittery, and he imagines the crash isn’t going to be pretty. “Shit, I hated that, actually. Wanna try to figure out what we’re doing here?”

A sigh. Nails gently scratching his scalp. “Honestly? Not really. But we can hunt around a little if you want.”

“In a minute,” says Brian. “Just— in a minute.”

“Okay,” says Pat, matching his tone, quiet, gentle. “In a minute, then.”

/

They don’t end up actually getting up for about an hour; Brian wasn’t wrong about the adrenaline crash being rough, and Patrick didn’t seem to be planning on being the one to pick them up off of the couch first. Eventually, though, Brian musters up the energy and will, and they do a quick scan of the safehouse.

There is nothing identifying. “We should’ve expected this,” says Brian, when he opens a drawer to find thirty-one takeout menus, scattered haphazardly. They’re a perfect mix of different cuisines, and look mostly untouched. “No one lives here! The whole point is not to know it belongs to us. Me? Someone we know?”

“You,” says Pat. “Or— your dad, I think.”

Brian envies him, then, more than he has through this entire situation, ever since he woke up in Baltimore and had to reconcile his life with the impossible. “You always know things. You figure it out first, every time.”

“Not every time,” says Patrick, still casual, and that stings, too. 

“I feel like I’m playing catchup with you.”

There’s relief in adding some bite to his words. It’s shitty, maybe, but it helps.

“Bri,” replies Pat on a disbelieving smile, “it’s not a competition. We figure this shit out together, remember?”

They’re on the same team, yes. Obviously. But it feels good to dig his heels in. To have something to rail against since the universe won’t let him fight it head on. “You figure it out and I wait for you to tell me.” There’s something about this place. Something about the stress of being fucking _shot_ at juxtaposed against the horribly neutral dove gray curtains. The safehouse is bland. Makes Brian feel like he’s being driven up the walls, like his frustration is just plain crazy, like he can’t get it together, and that just makes him feel less in control. He keeps going. “I _hate_ this. I’ve said that, but I don’t know if I— Pat, I don’t want to do this anymore, I wanna go _home_ —”

And then Brian’s crying big, ugly, heaving sobs, the kind that screw his face up and make him go red. What is he supposed to do with this? What the fuck are they supposed to do?

There’s so much conflicted, messy hurt in his chest, and Brian doesn’t know where to put it.

“Sweetheart,” murmurs Pat, sounding at once sympathetic and kind of taken aback, but always, always cool and collected, and something in Brian snaps.

“Don’t,” he says between wet gasps, “don’t touch me, don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Please.”

“I won’t touch you, Bri. I’m gonna stay over here. But I wanna help you, okay? What do you need?”

The question sends a fresh cascade of tears down his cheeks. He feels like he’s coming apart at the seams a little. Or more than a little. “I don’t know. Some space, maybe, I don’t know.”

Pat runs an agitated hand through his hair. “I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

 _Here_ , he says, and Brian doesn’t know what he means by it. He could mean the safehouse, because of the danger. He could mean this universe, and the answers they haven’t found. But he could mean the loop, too. Pat is quicker, listens better to his body, doesn’t get caught up trying to see things that aren't there. If that’s what it’ll take to get out of this, then Brian doesn’t stand a chance, and Patrick will go home and leave him behind and live a happy, Brian-less life.

 _He’d miss you_ , whispers Brian’s heart, but his heart is a fucking traitor, anyway. Riles him up, encourages him to hurt the people he loves.

Maybe they won’t ever get it right. 

Brian can’t calm himself down, but curling into a ball on the couch in the sparse living room helps a little. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

No answer. Brian shivers, looks up into Pat’s helpless face. 

“It’s okay,” says Pat, finally, after an aching stretch of silence. “I can take a hint. I’ll be out here if you need me.”

 _I always need you_ , Brian doesn’t say, because his head hurts and he just wants to be alone right now. “Thanks,” he answers, voice creaky. He’s mostly stopped crying, at least. 

“Sure,” says Pat, like it doesn’t matter.

But they both know that it does, and that something feels different now. A gap that wasn’t there before.

Brian trudges miserably to the bedroom and, like a coward, stays there with the door shut for long enough that he falls asleep for real, dreamless, awful, and wakes up someplace else.

/

His seatmate keeps elbowing him. Or, at least, Brian assumes she’s been doing it for a while if his irritation levels are anything to go by. A casual elbow between people in the same row in economy class? Usually fine. But it’s only been about twenty seconds and Brian is about to blow his top, and not in the fun way. Pair that bubbling rage with the lingering dread from the last world, and he’s in a pretty sorry state.

He doesn’t even know how long this flight is, or where he’s going.

There’s a briefcase at his feet, which he registers as his own (horrifyingly), but he doesn’t even get a chance to open it and explore the contents when he hears, “Can I get you something to drink?”

He turns around, and— of course, right? This was never going to go any other way.

“Hi,” he says, gets it over with, lifts his head ruefully. “Um, water’s fine. Also, hi.”

Patrick’s face is unreadable. Brian can’t even tell who noticed the other first, and it leaves him cold. “All right. One water, coming right up. And you?”

When he asks the woman next to him what she wants, Brian feels himself become invisible, and shrinks against it. He didn’t get here alone. He’s not been abandoned. That isn’t how it works. Any second now, Pat will meet his eye properly and shoot him that conspiratorial little smile, and Brian will smile back through the tension between them, and they’ll slot back into the familiarity of the unfamiliar.

But Pat does his job and then he keeps walking, and Brian nurtures that niggle of doubt in his chest for hours after.

/

It’s only when they’re disembarking that Brian feels the uncertainty in him give way to panic. “Pat,” he says, having waited by the gate for the flight attendants to finally come off of the plane, and then again, louder, when the other man doesn’t seem to have heard him, “Pat!”

The moment that passes after is the longest fucking moment of Brian’s life, but Pat does look up. “Hey.”

Brian waits for Pat to walk over, and checks his eyes for— for— god, he’s not even sure what he’s looking for. “Hi,” he says again, and hears it fall flat into the air between them.

Pat’s expression is still dull. His hair is shorter in this world, Brian notices, and then he keeps on cataloguing: Pat’s shoes are shiny like they never really are back in their world, and his white shirt is neatly pressed, and there’s no hint of stubble at his jaw or under his nose. And Pat’s brow is harsh. And Pat’s mouth is all tight at the corners. 

“I thought you wanted space,” Pat says, finally.

“I did.”

“And now?”

Funny how Brian doesn’t know what he wants anymore. “This is scary,” he says, instead of giving an answer, and wants to bite it back immediately. It’s childlike, embarrassing. But he’s already here, and Brian’s nothing if not a master at leaning in. “You said, a while ago. You said you didn’t want to do this without me.”

Pat laughs, but it’s mirthless. “So you’re saying hi for my sake? Gee, thanks.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?”

The airport, Brian reflects as someone nudges their way past him and another person runs their suitcase over Pat’s foot, is probably not the best place to do this. “Can we talk about this at my place?”

“You live here?”

Brian nods. He’d found a keyring in his bag, each key labeled by what it opens, and one of them reads _home_ in his own chicken scratch. That home is here, where they’ve landed in Portland. Brian’s pretty sure, and pretty sure is all he thinks he can hope to be right now. 

“C’mon,” says Brian, “what else are you gonna do?”

For a moment, it seems like Pat will be stubborn enough to wander this city alone until sunset, but eventually his shoulders slump. “Fine,” he answers. “I’ll call a car or something.”

They walk out of the airport side by side, weaving between busy travelers and screaming children. Brian has a tension headache the size of Montana building behind his eyes, and this situation isn’t helping. All of the noisy clutter of their surroundings. All of the miserable silence between them. Brian fucked up, he thinks. He just doesn’t know how to set things right with the way his temper keeps getting in the way. Maybe the trick is to talk about other stuff, ease them into the rest.

“So is this, like,” he starts tentatively, an olive branch, “a dream of yours, or something? See the world, serve people drinks? Seems like a sweet deal to me.”

“I’m claustrophobic,” Pat reminds him flatly.

“Right,” says Brian.

He shuts up after that.

/

Brian’s place in Portland is sparse, and frankly rather depressing for it. There’s a dying houseplant by the door that Brian dimly remembers he had been paying someone to take care of, and his shoes are all scattered in a haphazard pile in the entryway. Beyond that, the decor is gray, neutral, cool. Detached, like Brian feels. Despite his swirling emotions, this body just can’t hold onto any of it, not really. It slips through his fingers like beach sand.

“Nice place,” says Pat drily.

“Ha,” answers Brian, tossing his keys onto the counter and flopping onto the sleek, uncomfortable couch. “Yeah, thanks.”

Pat takes a slow lap, and Brian tries not to squirm at the slow examination of the bummer of an apartment he lives in. _I love you_ , he thinks, unbidden. There’s no flash of inexplicable recognition in his chest as he looks at Pat. They’re strangers here. The love belongs only to him.

Even though Pat won’t even look him in the eye. “What do you do here? In this world, I mean?”

Brian bites back a snappy little joke and answers earnestly. “Something in sales, I think. I’m pretty sure I hate it. I’m, uh— pretty sure it’s awful.”

Pat hums. “Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like you.”

“No,” answers Brian, nervous, wrong-footed. They’re fighting, right? That’s what’s happening? It’s hard to tell by the even cadence of Pat’s voice, and the fact that it hasn’t even been half a week since they proclaimed all kinds of dramatic love for each other. _I love you_ , he thinks again, and wants Pat close so bad it makes his teeth hurt. “Um, did you wanna talk?”

Pat shrugs one shoulder, back still mostly to Brian. He’s focusing very carefully on a painting on the wall; it’s a landscape of a park, and it looks like something that was picked out by the designer Brian hired to deal with this place. “Maybe after you give me the rest of the grand tour.”

“Of this apartment?”

“No, of the Taj Mahal.” Pat sounds like he’s smiling a little now. “Yes, of your apartment.”

Brian nods, peels himself up off of the couch. “Well, um, that’s the kitchen, and—”

“Bedroom?” asks Pat. His voice wavers, just barely, like he’s nervous. Like he’s only holding it together by the skin of his teeth. Like he doesn’t know what to do with the wanting.

It’s surprising, at first. Pat always seems so buttoned-up, and he’s not really the type to make the first move. But Brian has learned, over and over again, to throw away what he thinks he knows. In this world, he’s a salesperson, and Pat is a flight attendant, and who knows where they’ll be tomorrow. If Pat’s going to look at him like that, all dark, searching eyes, all tremble at the mouth, then far be it from Brian to say no to his own soft heart.

Pat raises an eyebrow, challenging. It’s the nearest to him Brian has felt all day. “Down this hall,” he says. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

/

As it turns out, you can get a lot of things across to someone without having to speak about them at all.

Brian’s mouth seeking against the heat of Pat’s throat: _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I still want to be close to you_.

Pat’s hands big on Brian’s waist: _I didn’t want it to be like this. I don’t want dread to creep up in my throat when we’re together._

And Brian shivering in the air conditioned bedroom when he lets Pat take his shirt off: _I still trust you more than anyone. I don’t want to be alone._

And Pat so gently tracing the line of Brian’s cheekbone: _I can be mad at you and still love you_.

And that last one, repeated over and over in the touches between them, how they pull together even when they can’t get any of the rest of it right. 

Under the amber glow of his bedside lamp, Brian lets himself be undone by the only other person in the world.

 _What the hell do you do with a love like this?_ Brian wonders with his hands. _Look at what we do to each other. After all of this, what we’ve seen, what we’ve given each other...I think I’m fucked up over you for life, Pat Gill. I think that maybe I’m like this for good._

He looks right into Pat’s eyes and feels simultaneously more loved and more alone than he ever has. The bedsheets, too crisp, not lived-in, crease under their bodies. Pat touches him like a prayer, and Brian lets himself unspool.

/

Brian wakes up hungry. It’s unpleasant, made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that it’s about twelve billion degrees out today. “Fuck me,” he whines alone on a too-shiny boulevard, and feels himself begin to walk down the street in search of his purpose and hopefully a bite to eat.

It becomes clear quickly that Brian’s in Los Angeles. No other city bites like this, punchy and almost apologetic about it, all grin, all veneer. He passes by three new juice places, a faux-antique shop, some stylized tattoo and hair parlors, and a singular cheap-ish coffee and bagel place. Brian chooses the last of these to enter, sweat beading at his brow, and scopes out the scene.

Before him: a woman practicing her broken Spanish with a patient employee, two teenagers poring dramatically over the donut collection, a chihuahua in a pet carrier, and the heavenly scent of unpretentious coffee. He waits his turn and orders an Americano and a croissant sandwich with ham and egg, which only mostly falls apart in hands, and laments the state of his wallet. He’d paid with a few crumpled bills, and is scared to look at his bank account. He’s starting to put the pieces together, and he’s not thrilled with what they say about the completed puzzle.

Starving artist in LA is just _so_ damn cliche.

And yet.

He finishes eating and keeps walking for a bit, ducking under shady areas when he can. He wishes he had a hat. He wonders where Pat is. He lets his feet take him wherever they want.

Eventually, he leads himself to a surprisingly unflashy storefront for a local psychic.

He remembers the conversation he had with Pat in Hawaii. Their honeymoon. How Patrick had looked at him and asked, _But do you have a better plan?_ And Brian had told him no.

Maybe it’s naïve, or silly, or overly dreamy. Brian has been called all of those things and worse by people who don’t understand him, or people who don’t care to. And Brian doesn’t even think it’ll work, not really. But they’re out of options, and all he wants is for someone to look at him like he’s not out of his mind batshit insane. This, he figures, is as good a chance for that as any.

It’s when he walks in that Brian realizes he doesn’t know anything about the etiquette of seeing a fortune teller.

Or, psychic. Maybe calling a psychic a fortune teller is offensive. Or it could be the other way around? Either way, there’s no one at the front of the shop, just a string of beads, a tiny desk, and a huge fluffy chair covered in white faux fur.

Brian sits in the chair. Clears his throat. “Um, hello?” He then feels ridiculous sitting in the chair, and stands up.

Waits a bit. Sits down again. It’s not like he has anywhere better to be. “Is anyone here? I’m, um— a customer? Potentially?”

Another minute passes, then two more. Brian itches at his collar.

He nearly falls right out of the chair when, three minutes after that, the bead curtain clatters open and someone shoves it aside. “Aha!” cries the woman that glides into the room.

She’s maybe five foot tall on a good day, with big wiry silver hair that sits in a curly halo around her head. Despite the air of mystery to her, however, she’s dressed remarkably plainly. Where Brian had been expecting purple robes and a necklace with a heavy gemstone, he instead finds well-tailored pants and a soft blue cardigan over a simple black camisole. Brian’s own skinny jeans and knockoff designer shirt seem embarrassingly try-hard in comparison.

“I’m Brian. I saw your sign outside?”

“Yes, yes, call me Elvira.”

Brian blinks. “Is that your name?”

Elvira smiles coyly. “My given name? No. But what’s in a name, really? I’ve found that the names we give ourselves are often the truest, anyway. Isn’t that right, Truthseeker?”

“You know, I appreciate that, but Truthseeker David Gilbert doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it.”

Elvira tosses her head back when she laughs. “I like you. Come on, come back and we can get started. I can do a reading for you for thirty dollars.”

Brian sighs. Sorry, Brian of this world. Better book something soon. “That sounds great.”

They walk into a small back room, set up with two chairs on either side of a rickety looking table. The walls are lined with shelves and trinkets, and there’s a steam diffuser working quietly in one of the corners, making the whole room smell like vanilla and sandalwood. “What brings you here, Truthseeker?”

Brian supposes that he is going to be Truthseeker for the next hour, and swallows down annoyance. The point of this is to escape judgment. Or open his mind. Or something like that? Brian maybe isn’t as sure as he thought he was.

“I’m not sure what I should do,” he settles on. 

“I’m sure that’s true.” She sits down, and gestures for him to do the same across from her.

He does so, folding his hands in his lap, and waits for her to do the psychic thing.

In this, she doesn’t disappoint. She reaches below the table and pulls out a set of tarot cards, shuffling them idly in her hands. “You know what you want,” she tells him, and then pauses, squints. “You _think_ you know what you want. But you’re a bit lost, aren't you?”

“Well,” says Brian, “yes.”

She nods, hums to herself. “I’ll lay out a spread for you, and we can talk through what it means. The cards will reveal anything that’s been evading you, and provide clarity where you lacked it before. But we need a guiding question before we start. Perhaps something like ‘Will I find a lover that pleases my parents’?”

Brian draws back a little, startled. “I mean, I was more wondering about how to get home.”

“Ah, so asking about a fortune you are meant to receive soon?”

“Hm.”

“‘Will I find success in my career?’, maybe?”

“Nope.”

“How about any family members that have crossed the veil? We can try to reach them.”

Brian sighs heavily. “I just want to get home,” he says. “Can we start there?”

Elvira’s smile freezes for a moment before relaxing back into something inviting. “Home, hm? And you’re not sure how to get there?”

“I’ve been trying,” says Brian. “Really, really hard. I thought I knew what I was supposed to do, but now I’m not sure. And I’m, um… I’ve been taking it out on a friend. I don’t want to keep doing that, but I don’t want to be stuck in this cycle forever, either. Can you help with something like that?”

“I’m sure I can,” comes the answer, with a remarkable lack of certainty considering the confidence she’s shown up to this point. Brian gets that universe-bending travel is a tough nut to crack, even for a psychic, but he’s surprised that she seems to pulling away from him rather than leaning in. “Here,” she says regardless, “go ahead and pull some cards and we can look at what they say together.”

He pulls three at her instruction and sets them next to each other, lined up neatly on the dark wooden table. 

“Excellent,” she says, waving her hands above them dramatically. “This first card will describe your past. What are the things that brought you to this point in your life?”

She flips the card over and reveals a heart pierced by three blades with rain falling in the background beneath a heavy stormcloud. “Ah,” she intones solemnly, “the three of swords. Truthseeker, you have carried so much emotion with you. Did you ever feel like your feelings were warring with each other? Like you needed to cry or shout to release some of the pain?”

Brian swallows hard. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, a little.”

“Hmmm. Yes, I feel that. But I also sense that you have released some of it in your own ways.”

“I guess.”

“It almost feels like you released it with the person who was causing the turmoil. Am I right? How did that happen?”

Brian thinks of his miserable little apartment in Portland and hears his voice jump an octave, cracking right in the middle, when he replies, “Well, um, it’s a funny story actually—”

Elvira guffaws. “It’s written in that blush on your face, Truthseeker. No need to be embarrassed, I won’t judge you. It’s perfectly natural.”

Brian nods tightly. “What else about this card?”

“It’s a reminder, twofold. First, that pain is necessary, and unavoidable. There is no way to live your life in a season of eternal summer. You’ll only hurt yourself trying. The pain will always return in some form or another.”

“Yikes,” says Brian.

Elvira smiles at him. “Second,” she continues, “that it will always pass.”

She lets the statement sit for a moment, watching Brian’s reaction, and he swallows down whatever emotion is trying to bubble up right now. The pain will pass, he reminds himself, even though it sounds more like a sympathy card greeting than any kind of useful advice. “And the present?” he asks.

She turns over a card, this one upside down. It features a woman sitting on a chair of some sort, and being carried by two other people. “The chariot,” says Elvira. “Inverted, too. How interesting.”

“Is that bad?” asks Brian.

“It’s a sign of a challenge,” she explains, bringing one hand up to toy with her curly hair. “There’s something you’re facing, and you feel like you’ve just been hitting your head against the wall. Like you’re not getting anywhere, and you’d rather keep running in a direction that won’t work because you just want it to be over.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“It’s making you reckless,” she continues. “Erratic, even. Emotional when you don’t need to be, and so determined you’ve slumped into tunnel vision. Nothing else matters except your goals. But what else are you missing? Maybe you need to take a step back.”

Brian adjusts his shirt as he leans forward. “How, though?”

Elvira smiles slowly. “That’s what this last card will tell us.” She flourishes a hand over it before flipping it over with a quick snap of the wrist, and then Brian is looking at…

“The tower,” he says. 

“Yes! Wow, a rare sight. You’re going to experience—”

“Change,” says Brian. “Death, maybe. Disaster, at least. Right?”

She presses her lips together like she’s thinking about it. “It means upheaval, mostly. It doesn’t have to be bad.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. I’m already _upheaved_. Everything’s a mess right now, and I’m trying to fix it. What is there to change? My _life_ is change.”

“Well—”

“How do you change change?”

“It could be something internal, maybe?” Her voice slides into uncertainty. “A sort of spiritual awakening, if you will.”

“But what does that mean?”

“I don’t control the cards, I’m simply speaking through them. Maybe if you look at it from—”

“No, I don’t— I’m trying to understand, but I don’t. And this is so generic, and you don’t know what’s going on with me, and I can’t figure out how to reconcile it. But there’s nothing to reconcile, is there?” 

At that, her shiny front slides into apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry, kid. I don’t have some mystical answer. I’m just trying to pay my rent.”

“Of course,” says Brian quickly, blinking hard against the stinging in his eyes. “No, yeah, totally. I wasn’t expecting anything else.” The rest of the mystique of this place fades. Brian zones back in to see the peeling paint, the water damage on the ceiling. “I should go.”

“Do you want to talk about it? You seem like you might need to.”

“No offense,” says Brian, feeling stupid, feeling like the naïve kid he’s scared he might have secretly been along, “but I don’t really want to talk to anyone right now.”

Elvira nods like she gets that. “Well, let me walk you out, at least.”

They make their way back to the door in silence. She hands him a business card. _Janice Summers_ , it reads, _Marketing Assistant_. Brian doesn’t recognize the company, or its trendy logo. “This is my side gig. I work most of the time trying to sell people shit.” She laughs then, bitterly, and seems younger for it. “I guess all of the time I’m trying to sell people shit. Never felt sleazy about it until now, though.”

When Brian looks around the front of the shop now, he wonders how he could’ve ever seen magic in it in the first place. “I think that if you can give desperate people hope, it’s not bad. It’s not sleazy. You’re just trying to make things better for them.”

Janice gives him a slow, searching look. “You’re a good one,” she says, not in the voice she was using before, but real this time. “I think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks,” says Brian. “I hope you do, too.”

He walks out with the business card in his pocket, afternoon sun still beating hot against the pavement, and feels a peculiar mix of disappointment and hope. 

/

Brian walks further down the block, then another, then another, and catalogues this part of the city. It’s glamorous in a way that tries not to be, glossy in its counter-culture. There are thrift shops galore where the cheapest thing costs fifty bucks, a steal because it’s designer, and fusion restaurants that meld every culture imaginable, likely headed by white chefs whose only interest in any of these cuisines is academic. Brian thinks about that as he walks—about what a place like this can do to a person. When everything is so shiny it’s blinding, you start to lose track of yourself. Is that what he’s struggling with here? The Brian of LA feels sad, and for what? He veers off of Melrose, turning onto a side street that looks mostly residential—

—and hangs a left directly into someone walking in the opposite direction. “Shit,” he exclaims, laughing a little, “oh no, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was—”

“Ah,” says Patrick Gill, “that’s convenient. I was just looking for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter @poppyseedheart if you'd like to connect!
> 
> Not sure when the last chapter will be out, but that'll be the best way to see (and I tend to post little snippets as I go <3). Love y'all.


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